Plock? - Japanese Student Made An Amazing Clock

Right, Plock, short for plotting clock - a clock that plots time all by itself. I'm Nathan Shiga and here to tell you a most ingenious thing ever built.

Who built it? A college senior in Yamagata, up north in Japan, Kango Suzuki by name. He has built Plock for his graduation thesis and, just for the heck of it, twittered a 16-second video up on February 7. The video brought home 100 thousand "yes" in half a day.

Now, Plock is a delicate structure of 400 wooden parts artfully assembled to plot time every minute. "What an aspiration!", "It's a specter of idea and effort.", "It should sell for 1 million yen for sure!", "Can't it be reduced to the size of a wrist watch?", "Gee, it'd be hard to have it checked.", etc.

There lived a genius inventor in Yedo named Giemon Tanaka who thrilled the world with most sophisticated mechanisms. Kango is rumored a Giemonn reincarnate. He might well be. Plock is no work of an ordinary engineer for sure.

Kengo Suzuki, 22, is a senior in the Department of Product Design, Tohoku University of Art & Design and fabricated this work for his graduation thesis. 

Here are some of his Q As:

- What made you think of building a plotting clock?"There are things we can do quite simply; what if we let machines do the same things. Likewise, we write letters with little effort, but how will a mechanism do the same. "

- How long did it take you to complete it?"It's not completed yet. It should be in another week or two. This version will have to do for the thesis exhibit starting February 9.  I'll have to sit aside to watch it."

- What was the hardest part of the work?"To have the plotters coincide to write the numbers in good timing - that's the toughest. Also, to cut out all the 407 wooden parts."

Good show, Kango.