Science: Wonder Clock

On display in Manhattan last week was a huge clockwork mechanism which the New York Museum of Science & Industry called, with some justification, "the outstanding Wonder of this age." Constructed with boundless patience and skill by Lodewyk Zimmer, famed Belgian watchmaker, this imposing gadget, which looks like a gross exaggeration of an airplane instrument panel, stands 16 ft. high, weighs 4,500 Ibs., is painted a robin's-egg blue. It has 93 dials and 14 automatons which continuously record such astronomical and terrestrial data as the rotation of the sun and the planets; solar longitude of the planets; phases of the moon;...