A few months ago I did not know what an Author Clock was, but I'm happy to report that I am now the proud owner of one! An Author Clock is a clock with an e-ink display that tells the time in a most unusual way. Every minute it displays a quote from a book that refers to the current time. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's what it looks like when the time is 12:20:
And at 3:58:
Every single minute it displays a new quote from a book!
I discovered this device earlier this summer while I was at the Milwaukee airport. There's a really nice used bookstore there and it had one of these on display. I asked the clerk about it, but she didn't know what it was called or why they had it there. After a bit of internet searching, I discovered the website for it:
A month or so later, Wendy got me one as a birthday gift!
The clock comes in two sizes which they refer to as Vol1 (cell-phone sized) and Vol2 (tablet sized). I have the tablet-sized one, which is the way to go, in my opinion, since my eyesight is not as sharp as it used to be.
Apparently the makers of the clock crowd-sourced finding quotes that refer to the time, and they have amassed a database of over 13,000 quotes, which means there are multiple quotes for all 1,440 minutes of the day. Very cool! The clock will randomly choose a quote among the options, so you may or may not see the same quote when that minute happens again.
Here are a couple more photos of the clock in action:
Sometimes I'll stand in front of the clock for minutes at a time to see what the next quote will be. It's dorky, but a lot of fun!