Berlin Uhr Nano

There’s a clock in Berlin, on Budapester Strasse near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, that’s unlike any we’ve seen anywhere else. Its display shows no numerals, and there are no hands going round; instead there are rows of lights.

Each of the red lights in the first row represents five hours. Each red light in the second row represents one hour. It’s a 24-hr clock so, to show 2 o’clock, you’d light up two red lights from the top row and four from the second row, making 14 hours. Each of the lights in the third row represents five minutes, and each of the lights in the fourth row represents one minute.

It’s odd and unintuitive to those of us used to thinking of time in multiples of twelve, but it works. This creation by Julius Oeff goes two better, in that it miniaturises the clock into a wearable size, and adds two more rows of LEDs to represent seconds. Ausgezeichnet.