From the Archives – May 9, 2006
What is it about clocks that intrigues us? Especially the large, landmark variety? I ponder this as I look forward to meeting my son tomorrow evening under the four sided brass clock in the middle of Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal. It’s been everyone’s favorite meeting spot forever.
Famous clocks abound, not only in New York which also boasts of the Times Square digital classic, but also in other cities around the globe. There is London’s Big Ben, although Google® tells me this is really the name of the bell beneath the clock face and not the name of the clock itself. I say this is splitting hairs by now. Or maybe nanoseconds.
Gisborne, New Zealand, has the Millennium Countdown Clock. Since Gisborne is the first city in the world to greet a new millennium, this clock is already counting down the centuries until the start of the third millennium. This is an ambitious task, especially since nobody alive today will be around.
I looked on Google® for other famous clocks and learned of the Glockenspiel in Munich, Germany; St. Mark’s Clock in Venice, Italy; and the 9 O’clock Gun in Vancouver, British Columbia. But I was disappointed when one of my personal favorites didn’t make anybody’s list. It’s the clock that hangs on the corner of the Marshall Field building at Randolph and State Streets in Chicago; and I have met many people there over the course of my connection to that city. I’d hate to think that because the name Marshall Field is gone from the particular building that the clock is less important.
Perhaps the most ominous is the Doomsday Clock of the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,” which was created to alert the world of the danger it faces from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This virtual clock appears on the cover of each issue of the bulletin; since 2002, its hands have been fixed at seven minutes to midnight, midnight being symbolic of a cataclysmic end to life as we know it. In a way, this clock is the one under which we all wait.
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