This amazing clock may have been constructed almost 400 years ago, but it’s just as bone-chilling as it was back then. To tell the time, just crack open his skull cap, and the clock is where his brains should be.
The skull and crossbones automaton clock has a mechanical moving jaw, and snakes that dart out of its eyeballs. The Watchismo Times describes it best:
“During the first minute, the skull’s expression seems to smile, the second minute it seems to laugh, the next appears to scream and finally, the jaws snap shut, as if the skull were trying to bite something. At the same time, one of the snakes slowly sinks back down into one of the eye sockets, while the other slowly comes out of the other eye, before retracting suddenly, as the first snake again springs out from its eye-socket.”
I guess you shouldn’t put your fingers in the mouth of this thing if you want to keep them.
The gilded brass clock was built in 1610 by Nicolaus Schmidt der Junger in Augsberg, Germany and recently sold for $135,000. I guess I won’t be able to have this in my haunted house this Halloween.
[via Born Rich]
