the.com/clockwork
Tiny gears conspiring in the dark so you'll never be late again.
means Working with the smooth, predictable, perfectly timed regularity of a mechanical clock — so reliable it seems automatic.
from A plain compound of 'clock' and 'work,' built straight from the parts. 'Clock' itself likely comes from a medieval Latin and Celtic word for 'bell' (clocca) — early clocks announced the hours by ringing rather than by hands on a face. So 'clockwork' first literally meant the inner machinery of a clock: the gears, springs, and escapements ticking away. The figurative 'like clockwork,' meaning faultlessly regular, grew naturally from how astonishingly dependable those mechanisms seemed.
- oldest
- Antikythera mechanism predicted eclipses over 2,000 years ago
- escapement
- One clever lever made accurate timekeeping possible
- jewels
- Watches use rubies as low-friction tiny bearings
- orange
- Burgess novel made the phrase mean menacing precision
- automata
- Clockwork built dolls that wrote and birds that sang
a clockwork orange — stanley kubrick's 1971 film adaptation of anthony burgess's 1962 novel about a dystopian future
strasbourg astronomical clock — medieval cathedral clock in alsace, france built in 1547 with intricate clockwork and animated figures