The University of Cambridge college Corpus Christi has just unveiled a very different type of clock. It appears to use the latest in electronics but is in essence purely mechanical. The LEDs that help show the passing of time in hours, minutes and seconds are simply visuals that shine through a series of vernier slots.

There is a tenuous link between this clock and wattwatt. It belongs to Einstein. When talking about how time is relative, he said that an hour spent sitting with a pretty girl seemed like a minute, whereas a minute sitting on a hot stove could seem like an hour!

The Corpus Christi clock, although expected to remain true for 200 years, is only truly accurate every five minutes. The rest of its time is spent hesitating and advancing through the universe, pausing on the hours, then jumping through seconds and minutes just like man himself does.

Powering wattwatt is the IEC and again it was partly Einstein who was the inspiration behind the IEC's "natural passion" theme developed by the Geneva artist, Thierry Clauson. Like Einstein, who stumbled on his theory of relativity when walking out in the countryside and seeing a column of smoke rising from a distant train crossing the far horizon, he wanted to depict his own passionate manner by wedding nature to electrotechnology. 

You can see more about this unusual association of ideas with an explanation and examples of the natural passion images on the website of the IEC. Perhaps too, because this is all about time, I should mention the future and how it is seen through the eyes of tomorrow by a child, part of the centenary celebration video collection.