Product: Clock: Chime
Clockwork Orange Clock   (+1)  [vote for, against]
Just the thing for the modern "Retro" home.

The Clockwork Orange Clock consists of a large stylised orange, exquisitley hand-carved from tropical hardwood painted with orange lacquer and actually about 200mm in diameter. It stands on a polished ebony plinth, the major axis of the Orange (represented by the bits at each end) is tilted to match the Earth's axial inclination.

Rising from the plinth is a silver pointer in the form of a chased and engraved flick-knife; the pointer can be removed from its holder for use as a letter opener. The tip of the blade indicates a point on the equator of the "orange", around which are marked twenty-four divisions. The disc on which the divisions are marked turns once a day; the disc above it, once an hour, giving minutes indication (there is no second hand).

[LATER] It is also possible that the complete upper and lower hemispheres could contrarotate or corotate, one bearing the hours digits, the other the minutes. An equatorial disc could then indicate seconds but would be optional.

The setting controls for the alarm/chime are comcealed under the base. []

The clock is wound by insering a brass key into the hole concealed uner the "north pole".

A chiming mechanism can be set to play brief selections from the works of Ludvig van Beethoven, either as an hourly indication; the alarm sound (to tell you that it's time for you to put on your bowler hat and go out to meet your Droogs at the Moloko Bar for some Milk Plus and maybe a bit of the old Ultra Violence) is of course "Singing In The Rain" .
-- 8th of 7, Jan 16 2003

(?) Terry's chocolate orange http://www.candystand.com/terrys/
My favourite chocolate. Man I love this stuff. [madradish, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

The Clockwork Orange http://www.clyde-va...gow/under.htm?12345
You cannot set your watch by this. [my face your, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Homebrew Clock: A Clockwork Orange http://www.amug.org...omas/clockwork.html
From IEEE magazine. [oldvan, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Tasty. Clockwork orange always makes me think of chocolate orange. I'd like the clock. Nice work 8th...the collective is proud.
-- Zircon, Jan 16 2003


"Bliss, bliss and heaven... it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh...Oh, it was wonder of wonders... And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now... "
-- RayfordSteele, Jan 16 2003


Zircon: at twelve o'clock the clock could fall open revealing its chocolaty goodness within. The association of time-pieces and cocoa is sadly lacking for eleven months of the year, outside the December-only chocolate advent calendar.
-- kropotkin, Jan 16 2003


wish I had the vision of FJ or 8th to do a chocolate orange clock, I can imagine each segment falling open to reveal the hour. not sure how the minutes would work but there would be lots of melting and chocolate and orange goo. come to think of it a toblerone clock would be nice too, and an aero bubbly one. and...

apologies [kro] I didn't read yours, so sorry.
-- po, Jan 16 2003


Another bl***y clock, mutter, mutter, mutter...
-- DrCurry, Jan 16 2003


// I would prefer a clock to some annoying little prick telling us we're all geeks and losers. How about you? //

That would probably be a "Dr Curry" clock, we presume ?

[CrumbsDM] - yes, nice idea. Maybe the clock could play a tinny musical-box version of "Singing in the rain" while Alex puts the boot in to a bell in the shape of a middle-aged author.

<Wail of despair> Chocolate Orange ! Chocolate Orange ! Ooops, there goes our diet .....

We never thought of it as a chocolate version, that would be the Chocolate Clockwork Orange Clock of course. Over to you, [FJ].
-- 8th of 7, Jan 17 2003


[Madradish], do you know that Terrys now do a White Chocolate "snowball" orange ?

"Quick nurse, the screens !"
-- 8th of 7, Jan 17 2003


// ...has a "Droog" come out with a cane and give the bell "Lashings of Ultraviolence" //

Or chase it around with a giant penis.
-- waugsqueke, Jan 17 2003


[8th] yeah and if some one carved a non working model of the same out of sandstone it would be a chocolate clockwork orange mock clock in rock
-- Zircon, Jan 17 2003


[8th of 7] Yes...uh...we...umm...["we'll do the best we can"]...yeah, we'll do the best we can.
-- FarmerJohn, Jan 17 2003


Fine, fine ..... just one request - no lightning rods, OK ?
-- 8th of 7, Jan 17 2003


What can I say – I like clocks. +
-- Shz, Jan 17 2003


<overused cliche> Is the color orange named after oranges, or are the oranges named after the color orange because they're orange? </overused cliche>
-- Evil_Baron_Moustachio, Jan 17 2003


"The history of the word orange keeps step with this journey only part of the way. The word is possibly ultimately from Dravidian, a family of languages spoken in southern India and northern Sri Lanka. The Dravidian word or words were adopted into the Indo-European language Sanskrit with the form nraga. As the fruit passed westward, so did the word, as evidenced by Persian nrang and Arabic nranj. Arabs brought the first oranges to Spain, and the fruit rapidly spread throughout Europe. The important word for the development of our term is Old Italian melarancio, derived from mela, “fruit,” and arancio, “orange tree,” from Arabic nranj. Old Italian melarancio was translated into Old French as pume orenge, the o replacing the a because of the influence of the name of the town of Orange, from which oranges reached the northern part of France. The final stage of the odyssey of the word was its borrowing into English from the Old French form orenge." Orange as color comes from the color of oranges.
-- FarmerJohn, Jan 17 2003


<stunned silence>
-- egbert, Jan 17 2003


Yes it is, all the bananas have died out.
-- egbert, Jan 17 2003


so what did they call the colour orange before they got oranges?

is there a new colour out there that we are all blind too because the fruit has not arrived yet? :) nice one fj
-- po, Jan 17 2003


If an orange falls in the woods.....
-- Shz, Jan 17 2003


there's a hole in the rainbow zone
-- po, Jan 17 2003


Up here, they call that color literally "fire-yellow".
-- FarmerJohn, Jan 17 2003


what? orange?
-- po, Jan 17 2003


Silly little po - keep up with the plot there. Meow.
-- The Kat, Jan 17 2003


That actually may make some sense [FJ]. Historically there were colors associated with natural forces. – The five elements: azure=wood, red=fire, yellow=earth, white=metal, and black=water. Fire was typically the sun (red) and anything that grew was typically earth (yellow). sun+earth=orange. When it gets hot (seasonally) you get fire-yellow (oranges). Of course that assumes that the etymology can be linked to a place where there were oranges. Just a HB thought.
-- Shz, Jan 17 2003


I just went to post my own clockwork orange idea and figured that I had better search first. Yours kicks the snot outta the one I had in mind. (+)
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 27 2003


That doesn't sound quite right to me, [Shz]. The first things you notice about colour words in ancient texts are that (a) there aren't very many of them and (b) they don't map one-to-one to modern colour words.

The enumeration of natural forces (in Europe, at least) was, I think, mostly done by philosophers, rather than the general public and, significantly, was done differently by different philosophers, so that there was no one universal system.

The colour/element mappings you give look to me as though they might have been made up by Renaissance occultists with nothing better to do (Elizabethan half-bakers, perhaps?), and not part of mainstream culture.

Of course, maybe this is a non-European system from a non-European culture, but I doubt this, because of the use of the word 'azure', rather than 'blue'. If you were going to translate from, say, a Japanese tradition, why wouldn't you say 'blue'?

By all means post some links to prove me wrong; this could be interesting.
-- pertinax, Jun 22 2006



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