Electric Ball Clock
I used to have one of these clocks when I was a kid, and thought it was one of the greatest things ever invented! Recently I stumbled upon Stuart's Rolling Ball Clock page, and found that he had some of the original Arrow clocks for sale. I had tried one of the Time Machine clocks which came out in recent years, but it was quite spectacularly bad; despite how similar they are to the Arrow clocks.
The Arrow clocks come in a bright yellow box, but need to be assembled by the new owner. This is quite an easy task .. taking a little over an hour. (Including a brilliant step involving the cool white crayon!)
The clock, once completed, looks like this:
The clock is made up of three main 'rails':
- The top rail holds just 4 balls ("MIN. 1 2 3 4"), each ball indicates one minute after the last five-minute mark.
- The middle rail holds 11 balls ("MIN. 5 - 15 - 25..."), each ball indicates one of the twelve five-minute marks which makes up an hour.
- The lowest rail holds 12 balls ("HR. 1 2 3 4 5..."), each ball indicates one hour. Note that the ball above the number 1 is actually permanent, since it's always at least 1 o'clock.
In the above photo, the time is 11:24.
The clock is actually pretty simple:
- An arm rotates at one revolution per minute. During this journey it picks up a ball from the lowest part of the clock, and deposits it at the very top. The ball rolls along the track, and comes to rest in the top rail.
- The top rail is weighted to hold just four balls. When the fifth ball arrives (every five minutes), the rail tips down, dumping all five balls into the tracks below. The fifth ball (which caused it to tip) is diverted to a separate track, which takes it to the middle rail.
- The middle rail is weighted to hold eleven balls. When the twelfth ball arrives (every hour), the rail tips down, dumping all balls into the tracks below. The twelfth ball (which caused it to tip) is diverted to a separate track, which takes it to the lowest rail.
- The lowest rail is weighted to hold twelve balls (with one ball locked above the number 1). When the thirteenth ball arrives (at 1 o'clock), the rail tips down, dumping all balls into the tracks below.
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