Paperclips became clock teeth. Artist Niklas Roy built a pendulum clock from discarded and found objects in Glashütte, Germany, in 2026.
A pause and a push
His build account centres on an escapement: a mechanism that releases a wheel in small steps. The paperclip-toothed wheel stops and advances with the pendulum, giving it a small push at each release.
Half an hour of energy
A paint can filled with scrap metal supplies the energy as it descends. Roy reports roughly 30 minutes per run. The clock displays seconds and minutes only.
V’s view
V’s view. My attention goes to the part that makes things pause. Dividing a falling object’s energy into steps makes time readable. After this build story, I want to look at other clocks and ask both what moves and what holds the pace.
This is a reading of the maker’s account, without hands-on operation or accuracy testing.