Wandering down King's Parade, on the corner of Trumpington street and in a stunning setting lies the Chronophage- the Time Eater a monstrous but wonderful grasshopper who literally eats time !
The creator John C Taylor is an old student of Corpus Christi College and he decided to build this magnificent clock at a cost of £1 million. Dr Taylor, 72, designed the timepiece as a tribute to English clockmaker John Harrison who solved the problem of longitude in the 18th century.
It was unveiled in 2008 by Dr Stephen Hawkings " A Brief History of Time"who lives in Cambridge and who incidentally we saw twice in our brief time there. It is a 24 carat gold plated stainless steel disc with no hands nor numbers to the clock face but three discs with LED displays which light up to tell you the exact time. The clock is accurate once ever five minutes, the rest of the time it seems to stop momentarily or catch and according to the creator this reflects "life's irregularities".
The most stunning part of this display is the grasshopper which rides over the disc eating the seconds. It moves its mouth literally eating up time hence "Chronophagos" from the greek time and to eat.
The Corpus Clock is wound up by an electric motor which will last for the next 25 years. It took a team of eight engineers and craftsman five years to mould the 24-carat gold-plated face.
Dr Taylor made his fortune developing the kettle thermostat.
Frighteningly beautiful and strikingly remindful of our life's short passage on this earth.
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