What is time and timelessness? What is movement and what is silence?
Arthur Ganson, a sculptor and artist famous for his miracle mechanisms, tries to answer these questions. The inventor is often compared to Leonardo da Vinci, since he, like da Vinci earlier, gives the impression of a man who has overtaken time and lives in a wrong age.
One of the most famous Ganson mechanisms is not designed to do anything in particular. He does not produce energy, does not pretend to be a "perpetual motion machine", but when you look at his work, the word eternity comes to mind by itself.
The mechanism demonstrates how our, human, concept of time is incomparable with astronomical values - the birth of stars, galaxies, the Universe …
The device represents twelve identical mechanisms connected in series - gear reducers, with a gear ratio of 1:50.
The first is connected to an electric motor that rotates the shaft at a speed of about two hundred revolutions per minute. In this case, the first gear wheel turns in just a quarter of a minute - a total of four revolutions per minute.
The second mechanism goes into operation and its gear wheel will make a full turn in twelve and a half minutes. Not so bad!
Promotional video:
The third mechanism produces a gear revolution in … ten and a half hours.
And then it becomes extremely difficult to keep track of the rotation, and mathematics comes into play. So how long does it take for the subsequent gears to make one revolution?
The last shaft is firmly embedded in concrete. And, perhaps, this is correct - neither the concrete, nor the mechanism itself have any chance of living up to even the smallest movement of the 12th gear.