Incredible

A 60 rpm (revolutions per minute) motor drives the entire mechanism. It rotates once every second. The following pulley rotates once every 5 seconds (1:5 ratio). The next rotates once every 60 seconds or 1 minute. Then 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month, 1 year, and 1 decade. The decade wheel carries the load of the large arc. The large arc rotates once every century. The final ratio between the 60 rpm motor and the large arc is approximately 1:31.6 billion.

Each wheel is marked with a black nut to highlight a position that could be tracked over time. Along the arc, 100 lines mark the divisions of each passing year. When the clock finally reaches the end of a 100 year cycle, the arc falls off its track onto the floor.

I recently had to write a self-reflective essay for the end of my degree. They asked me what inspired me and I said that pretty much the only thing was humanity's ceaseless ability to produce wasteful, expensive, totally pointless and useless crap born of jealousy, greed and the simple desire to do something, anything that just makes your head spin and your jaw drag along the ground. The kind of thing that when you see it you just have to phone everyone to tell them about it in case it's existence was just something you dreamt about. This thing is staggering, just incredible.

Many, many thanks to James Allen for bringing it to my attention.

The original article is here.