Directly ahead, you’ll spot a huge round shimmering golden disc set into a glass window, with a strange, spiky metal grasshopper perched aggressively on top-just look for the creature with a sinister grin right above the glowing blue lights.
Ah, welcome to the legendary Corpus Clock-quite possibly the most unsettling way to check if you’re late for lunch in Cambridge! Picture this: you’re standing outside the Taylor Library, right at the edge of an old bank-turned-library, and towering before you is a clock unlike any other. Forget numbers or hands; instead, a 24-carat gold-plated disc, about the size of a large round table, ripples with light, shining and shifting with every catch of the sun and passing cloud. Look closer and you’ll notice three glowing blue rings of light marking out the hours, minutes, and seconds-but don’t stare too hard, or you might get hypnotized!
But what really grabs your attention is the strange, fearsome creature boldly sitting on top-a huge metal grasshopper, its legs clutching the top of the clock with a fierce hunger in its eyes. This is the Chronophage, the “Time Eater.” Every second, it slowly “chomps” its way around, its mouth clicking open and shut, as if it just can’t get enough of swallowing up time. And every now and then-blink and you might miss it-it actually blinks with golden eyelids, like it’s eyeing up its next tasty minute!
John Taylor, the mastermind behind all this, didn’t want your average clock. No napping in boring lectures for him-he poured five years and a million pounds into bringing it to life, harnessing every trick in the book: engineers, sculptors, jewelers, and scientists all working together. Even the shiny disc was shaped using actual explosives in a secret Dutch lab-now that’s a clock-making party I wouldn’t want to miss. The whole idea was to show off a type of clock mechanism called the “grasshopper escapement,” dreamed up by John Harrison back in the 1700s. Taylor thought, why hide the clever bits? So he made them massive and put them right at the front with that gloomy grasshopper, both beautiful and a little bit terrifying-sort of like realizing you’ve missed your train by one minute!
This isn’t just a pretty face-oh no! The Corpus Clock loudly lets you know the hour by clanking a chain into a hidden wooden coffin behind it. Not exactly Big Ben’s proud chimes, but you’ll definitely remember this one. And as if the blinking chrono-monster wasn’t enough, just below you’ll spot a Latin inscription, mundus transit et concupiscentia eius, which means “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” Nothing like a little existential dread with your sightseeing, eh?
Here’s the kicker: this clock is purposefully a bit wild. It shows the right time only once every five minutes, leaping ahead or falling behind whenever it feels like, a wriggling reminder that life has its own unpredictable rhythm. Taylor himself wanted to make a clock that wasn’t comforting or easy; he wanted “terrifying”-a constant, gleaming, chomping grasshopper to remind us all that time waits for no one, and it’s always hungry for more.
The Corpus Clock captured the imagination of the whole world when physicist Stephen Hawking himself pulled back the curtain in 2008 and officially set the Chronophage loose on Cambridge. Since then, it’s popped up in movies, TV series from India to China, and even a novel where it’s got a starring role-not bad for a slightly sinister timepiece.
Every part of this clock was an adventure to create, from the weird and wonderful escapement, to the golden glow made by secret military science, to features never seen before in clockmaking like the semi-random blink and that a pendulum, powered by age-old spring winds, quietly keeps the Chronophage’s mouth snapping for decades to come. You’re not just looking at a clock; you’re witnessing centuries of craftsmanship, a tangle of tradition and rebellion, all coiled up in one unforgettable golden spectacle.
So next time you catch your reflection in all that gold and hear the chain clank, remember: you’re standing in front of Cambridge’s wildest reminder that, no matter where you’re headed, time is always ready to take a bite out of your day!
Interested in knowing more about the appearance, mechanics of the clock or the funding and realisation
