I realised that no matter how good a watch is it doesn’t get you to where you are going any faster, in fact, a strange side effect of a watch is to distort time in the worst possible way, e.g. making unpleasant things last longer. I’ve not worked out how this happens yet since the watch does not exhibit coherent distortion of space/time, but my observations have led me towards thinking that it has something to do with how hairy ones arms are because when my partner is shopping she doesn’t experience the same time as me.

A watch is also quite a dangerous thing to be wearing when one has ones hands inside high voltage equipment or computer cabinets (possibly the real reason why I stopped wearing them).

Since discarding it, I can say that time is really not that important outside of the experiments and measurements that require accuracy. We’ve been duped into thinking that we need to know the time, much like our “need” to know the weather in a continent half a planet away.

Neat idea though Phil although I’d favour laser pointers and getting rid of the central pillar.

How about a smelly-clock? Different smells could be activated by being exposed to the light at the various times, e.g. fry up breakfast at 8am, tea coffee and biscuits at 11am, canteen smells at 1pm, traffic fumes at 5pm, sweaty gym socks at 6pm, etc etc.

Just think of the excuses… “Sorry I’m late, someone in the office broke wind and I thought it was an hour earlier than it actually was”.

Gary made a point at the beginning that noone seemed to pick up on, quote: “Uh, doesn’t the mechanism essentially require a clock to keep proper timing of the circling lights?”

ROFL

I have a pendence to view axiomatic design as aesthetic as you can establish (enough) independence between design functions to make the design feasible or sturdy.

Still, in terms of the design it is not elegant if a secondary clock is obviously needed, which is the case when you use multiple LEDs.

Pieter, I think I covered that earlier; AFAIK an artificial clock is only needed for dials that move faster than a shadow, and if you allow the power frequency for motors you can use it for LEDs.

I’m not sure how you define design “elegancy” as opposed to a purist view, because it is could be argued that it is more elegant from a design view to use a small amount of electronics instead of wearable and wasteful motors.

Maybe you mean visible elegance though, which is a no brainer win for the sketch above.