This would go great in a well-lit room.

"What time is it?"

(*squints*) "I have NO CLUE!"

brilliant!

Hey, what a bright idea!

You can still hang it off the wall. I mean, its not a sun dial its a ...bulb...dial...:/

"The only problem is that it doesn't work in direct sunlight, which kinda makes this the complete opposite of a sundial."

Nightdial, perhaps?

With a few modifications this could actually manage to be BOTH. Imagine something like this in a modern outdoor garden that, during the day, does operate as a sundial, but at night the lights come on and continue to operate the clock.

I really like the idea, but I think I would find it distracting, having a somewhat large-ish moving contraption hanging on my wall. Might be cool in a rec room, though.

This would so rock for a bar. Want, want,& desire.

you could use it in like a well shaded area?

It would make a great night light that also tells time. I think this is a really cool design.

I have trouble believing that it can manipulate the shadows like this. Even with dimmer lights, wouldn't the lamps sort of flush out the shadows surrounding that little dial?

I dunno if this is viable. Wouldn't the light from the other lamps "drown" out the shadows projected from the other lamps?

Cool idea though

This is a gorgeous idea.

It would be a great piece of alternative technological history. What if, instead of focusing on simply controlling mechanics in the original clocks to mimic a sundial, they had focused on controlling the timing and placement of light. How different might our technology be? Would our advancements be more dependent on light/shadow, photosensitivity, light/heat energy? Would the need for mechanical dependency to create electricity have inevitably supplanted photo-tech anyway?

good concept, bad execution. just wear a watch! No body needs to reinvent the wheel.

So instead of a normal clock that would use about 1/8 of the power, you now have 3 lights and some kind of rotational mechanaism on this thing just to tell the time. Sorry, why is this a good idea? "A nice design"? I'll need to look into the sarcasm factor there. Shite 3-D model and even worse rendering if you want to call it that...plus the guy didn't even place the numbers on the face correctly, they're completely out of perspective unless you live in Dali-land. First learn how to visualize, and use those skills for something that doesn't suck.

@TurboFool:

I am so pissed. F@#$ing work. Caused me to miss this post until after someone else (TurboFool) made my brilliant comment. This is getting so tiring.

Actually, I think this could (and should) be made in the night and day version Turbo suggests.

props to you T-Fool

Solar powered option?

although I would do it with only two hands as the lamp to provide seconds would have to whiz around too fast

Concepts...frikking cool things that are only CONCEPTS :/

And, I'd call it a "Shadow Clock (tm)" !

.

I wonder if they've thought about using lasers instead of lamps so that you could see it in the day. Like make the head of the pin there a crystal/lens so that the beam gets spread in a straight line or something. *shrug*

Not working well in a bright room aside this is a really cool idea.

You could just use the clock in your computer.

But I guess buying crap is fun too. Like a watch.

Ok I dont know much about light bending yadda-yadda physics, but it appears that it would work only on a horizontal surface, thus making it useless as a wall clock, which is about 95% of the market. Cool artsy concept though.

It looks very cool, but I wonder how much more juice it sucks than a regular clock.. It's not like it would waste any more energy than my TV, but it does make me wonder.

@Curves: I don't think that would matter, as the light source moves with the clock.

How exactly would this work when the bulbs are opposite each other (like in this picture). Wouldn't the light from one lamp cancel out the shadow of the other?

@Curves: Apparently not.
@jasahl: There is a reason they are at different heights.

@jasahl:
all that would havet to be done is to very the intensity of the light. Thus the shadow would still be visable

Seen that on the Bad Astronomy blog... That's actually pretty sweet! I'd get one!

There'd be no problem to make it work in a lit room. With bright LEDs as the lights, you would see the shadows for sure.

i had a better idea... make it a watch, with tiny leds circling around the inner rim. it won't have to be ugly as shitte.

Other than being a complete waste of electricity to run those bulbs (even if they're high-efficiency LED bulbs) all the time, it's a very cool idea.

as far as i can tell, it's two minutes and twenty seconds after 7:30. but maybe it's just me.

actually i love this idea, but with leds of maybe different colors to represent hours and minutes only. that second hand would be annoying. not too disco-ey, but different.

i'd buy it if it was efficient, didn't make any noise, and lasted more than two years without the motors taking a dive.

I actually think this sucks. No-one else seems to have the balls to say it.

I like it cool thing, but how about a watch thas only says "NOW" in the middle of it, no number and no pointers, then there you have it, the worlds most accurate watch. "The time is NOW" ;)
And just to add one more thing: A calender that says "Today" then you allways now which day it is :P ;)

@D.LYTE: I agree, pretty cool. But, um, different color lights? The time is read by looking at the shadows, so there'd be no color.

Hehehe I just noticed that I'm replying to D.Lyte about something using lights! OK, maybe not funny to you.. I should go to sleep now.

@riqgeez: Yes, we must reinvent the wheel everyday, so we can finally transgress it!