PaleoClock - slowest mechanical device ever made

Okay folks, this is an exclusive here at Arizona Geology. Tom Legg, the inventor of PaleoClock is unveiling his amazing clock right here!

The PaleoClock clock is a running, functioning geologic clock that makes one revolution every one billion years.

The inside of the clock contains a large train of 34 gears that reduces the speed of the clock down to the geologic timescale. Tom says this is the slowest mechanical device ever created.

· The clock hand moves 1.616 picometers per day (a picometer is one trillionth of a meter) and 5.9 angstroms or 590 pico-meters per year.

· It takes 42,542,000 years for the clock hand to move one inch.

· It takes the clock hand 32.79 days to move the diameter of a hydrogen atom (53 picometers).

· The PaleoClock™ is set to cuckoo every one million years. (Call Tom if it misses)

Tom unveiled the clock publicly tonight at the opening session of the AAPG annual meeting in San Antonio. Each PaleoClock is handcrafted by Tom of wood and unique minerals. The lower clock is a regular clock that tells regular time.

Tom and I worked together in the oil biz back 25 years ago and has been showing me prototypes of the PaleoClock over the past months. One of the biggest challenges was finding just the right gears to make it work. In the end, Tom had them custom made.

Tom Legg can be reached at 713-444-6178 or tom@paleoclock.com.

Update 4-22: I've added a photo of the gears that run PaleoClock, and a closer shot of the face.