The Aperoscope

This clock is the wicked version of the Alcoograph, as it limits the unfortunate owner’s alcohol consumption to only four drinks a day, thus preventing him from making resolutions he wouldn’t keep anyway. The spring is simply wound up once a week. The principle of operation is as follows: a mechanical clock makes the small central disc turn once every six hours. In doing so, it releases a ball every six hours, which tinkles as it falls into the large basin at the bottom. This marble symbolises the glass that can be drunk. Thus, four marbles fall each day, the four permitted drinks.

The time can be read on the spider of the astrolabe, through the large magnifying glass. But why on earth an astrolabe? Simply because it is the only device I know of that has a 24-hour scale, with its central hole indicating the location of the pole star around which all the stars in the sky rotate in an anti-clockwise direction. And above all, no axis, because the sky has no axis.

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