The Most Complicated Mechanical Clock in the World

Is something I’d like to see:

Among the 70 dials (and 122 indications) are: a perpetual calendar, leap year cycles; sunrise and sunset; local times at seventeen world-wide places; and animated tidal charts in eight different French ports.

Now that I am a seaside denizen of Malibu, and attuned to the ways of the waves, I appreciate such fine detail. Surfline is handy, but just doesn’t have the charm of an intricate machine with 40,000 moving parts. All the Besançon timepiece needs is a dial for Pt Dume tides. And a window indicating the precise, universal and astronomically accurate arrival of 4:20!

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Joshuah Bearman has written about CIA missions, jewel thieves, deranged private investigators, aspiring Fabios, bitter rivalry among dueling Santa Clauses, and the metaphysical implications of being the world's greatest Pac Man player. His article for Wired became the movie Argo.

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