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Painted functioning wooden clocks -- in progress.
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The Prague Astronomical Clock or Prague Orloj (Czech: Pražský orloj [pra?ski? ?rl?i]) is a medieval astronomical clock located in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. The Orloj is mounted on the southern wall of Old Town City Hall in the Old Town Square and is a popular tourist attraction.
The Orloj is composed of three main components: the astronomical dial, representing the position of the Sun and Moon in the sky and displaying various astronomical details; "The Walk of the Apostles", a clockwork hourly show of figures of the Apostles and other moving sculptures; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months.
The oldest part of the Orloj, the mechanical clock and astronomical dial, dates back to 1410 when it was made by clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadan and Jan Šindel, the latter a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Charles University.
Later, presumably around 1490, the calendar dial was added and clock facade decorated with gothic sculptures.
In 1552 it was repaired by Jan Taborský, clock-master of Orloj, who also wrote a report on the clock where he mentioned Hanuš as maker of the clock.
The Orloj stopped working many times in the centuries after 1552, and was repaired many times. In the 17th century moving statues were added, and figures of the Apostles were added after major repair in 1865-1866.
The Orloj suffered heavy damage on May 7 and especially May 8, 1945, during the Prague Uprising, when Germans directed incendiary fire from several armored vehicles and an anti-aircraft gun to the south-west side of the Old Town Square in an effort to silence the provocative broadcasting initiated by the National Committee on May 5. The hall and nearby buildings burned along with the wooden sculptures on the Orloj and the calendar dial face made by Josef Mánes. The machinery was repaired, the wooden Apostles restored by Vojtech Sucharda, and the Orloj started working again in 1948, but only after significant effort [1].
There exists a good deal of misinformation relating to the construction of the Orloj . For a long time it was believed that the Orloj was constructed in 1490 by clockmaster Jan Ruže (also called Hanuš) and his assistant Jakub Cech. Another fictitious story involves the clockmaker Hanuš being blinded on the order of the Prague Councillors.
From Wikipedia
I built this working cuckoo clock out of Lego bricks. It's using a quartz movement that I modified to work with the lego bricks.
The clock was designed in Bricksmith and I bought most of the parts through Bricklink.
A video of the clock in action is available at Youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v3BFXiamNA
Although a contraption at Stephansplatz in Hamburg is now thought to have predated them by two years, it has often been stated that the first traffic lights in Continental Europe were erected at Potsdamer Platz on 20 Oct 1924, in an attempt to control the sheer volume of traffic passing through. This traffic had grown to extraordinary levels. Even in 1900, more than 100,000 people, 20,000 cars, horse-drawn vehicles and handcarts, plus many thousands of bicycles, passed through the platz daily. By the 1920s the number of cars had soared to 60,000. The trams added greatly to this. The first four lines had appeared in 1880, rising to 13 by 1897, all horse-drawn, but after electrification between 1898 and 1902 the number of lines had soared to 35 by 1908 and ultimately reached 40, carrying between them 600 trams every hour, day and night. Services were run by a large number of companies, but in 1929 all these were unified into the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (Berlin Transport Services) company, which has operated Berlin’s trams ever since. Up to 11 policemen at a time had tried to control all this traffic, many of them standing on small wooden platforms positioned in key locations around the platz, but with varying success. The traffic lights, again from Siemens, were mounted on a five-sided 8.5 m high tower designed by Jean Kramer, shipped over from the United States, and actually modelled on a similar one erected on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1922, although towers like this had been a feature of New York since 1918. A solitary policeman sat in a small cabin at the top of the tower and switched the lights around manually, until they were eventually automated in 1926. Yet some officers still remained on the ground in case people did not pay any attention to the lights. The tower remained until c.1936, when it was removed to allow for excavations for the new S-Bahn line (on 26 September 1997, a replica of the tower was erected, just for show, close to its original location by Siemens, to celebrate the company's 150th anniversary. The replica was moved again on 29 September 2000, to the place where it stands today).
This clock tower was the main landmark in Dubai before the rapid development from 2000-2010 introduced other spectacular architectural feats such as Burj al-Arab, Burj Khalifa, Palm Jumeirah, just to name a few. Those who stayed in Dubai before knows that this roundabout used to be the centerpoint of this city.