Japanese pillar clock

Another Japanese contribution to clock design were ‘pillar clocks’ designed to be hung from the wooden pillars that supported the roofs on Japanese houses (the paper walls of Japanese homes were typically too fragile to support heavy wall clocks). These pillar clocks told time vertically: a clock-hand was attached to a weight that descended on a vertical track with adjustable indicators for the temporal hours.

Commentary. Philipp Nothaft (May-June 2019)