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Time Traveller September 2010

They say travel broadens the mind. It can also separate you from quite a bit of money. However, if you are not intent on spending three weeks in an alcoholic stupor while on a ship's cruise to nowhere, then moving out of your physical and intellectual comfort zone is highly recommended.

Guide Silke Magens at the National Claphams Clock Museum at the Town Basin has recently returned from a "horological high" that took in some of the World's greatest timepieces and instruments in some stunning museums. They ranged from the oldest working clock in the World at Salisbury Cathedral, to Strasbourg Cathedral, The Vienna Uhren Museum to the Galileo Museum in Florence, and a look at the Oyster Rolex Perpetual watch worn by Sir Edmund Hillary on his ascent of Everest in 1953. This now resides in the Beyer Clock and Watch Museum in Zurich. This museum incorporates the oldest watch shop in Switzerland, with masterpieces from France, Germany and Britain.

One of the reasons for this fascinating journey by Silke was to collect a clock gifted by a Dutch couple, Harry and Elly van Alphen, to our clock museum. Harry had lived in NZ for a number of years, and the gift was a way of saying thank you to his adopted country. This delightful time-piece was made in 1865 by French clockmakers Vincenti and Cie. It is well-worth a look, as it is beautifully crafted and visually a well-balanced piece. It will be a great addition to the Clapham Clock Collection.

One of my abiding memories of my boarding school was being caned for being more interested in history than maths! It was with fascination I talked to our museum guide Silke, who started her time-travel in Uzbekistan. This was home to Al-Beruni (973-1048), a man well ahead of his time. While medieval Europe was still using human ploughs, Al-Beruni had worked out, well before Copernicus, that the Earth went around the Sun, and that both were round. This polymath was a walking encyclopedia, and was able to explain how a sun-eclipse worked.

For those of you who have not read the book "Longitude", try it. It is a great read about a humble cabinet maker, John Harrison, who was in fact a genius. Silke visited the Greenwich Observatory near London, to look at the collection of Harrison clocks, built in the mid-1700s, and which gave to the World longitude, to go with latitude, and to allow sailors, for the first time, to no longer be lost at sea, including Captain Cook.

Our Clock Museum has a good collection of cuckoo clocks. The style originated in the Black Forest, Germany, and the World’s biggest cuckoo clock is found there. To the south, Silke's journey took her to Florence in Italy to see the Medici Collection in the Uffizi Galileo Museum, which can only be described as one of the best collections of clocks and scientific instruments in the World. It includes a rather spooky collection of what is known as "automita". These are very realistic moving human parts. It is thought Frankenstine may have used the library occasionally there! Seriously, as you walk around Clapham’s Clock Museum, be grateful that a hand doesn't suddenly appear and start to write on a sheet of paper: "Huic Domui Deus, nec metas rerum, nec tempora ponat... to this House, God sets no limits, nor deadlines". Talking of which...