Clockmaker Fritz Oswald made novelty clocks with rotating eyeballs, with one eye displaying the hours and the other displaying the minutes. They can look cute or completely deranged depending on what time it is.
Medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris shared this image of one of Oswald’s clocks with its ticking eyeballs. The J. Oswald Company patented this type of clock in 1926, and the clocks took the forms of skulls, dogs, genies, owls, and monkeys. After the J. Oswald Company stopped making the clocks, knockoffs appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, but the classic Oswald clocks are still collectors items.
You can see various Oswald clocks that have gone up for auction over the years, including loads and loads of delightfully kitschy dogs. The skulls are sort of a goofy memento mori, but the dogs look particularly silly when their eyes start going off in different directions.
[via Neatorama]
