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From playdrmom : "Honor has been quite interested in cuckoo clocks. Also, one of her favorite songs is “Tick tock tick tock. I’m a little cuckoo clock. Tick tock tick tock. Now I’m striking one o’clock.” So, when asked what she wanted to be for Halloween … she said “a cuckoo clock”." Click through to the website for instructions! I know what my son will dress up as next year!

As always, we're scouring the internets to find you the most interesting postings of fascinating automata! [via Kugelbahn ] [via io9 ]

The book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick has been on our reading list for quite some time (Take a look at the other titles while you're at it... just on the side bar of the blog ) So, it's great to see that Martin Scorsese has made a movie! This is Steampunk and Clockworkpunk gone mainstream!

From New Scientist : "Clocks that gain or lose no more than a fraction of a second over the lifetime of the universe could be on the way, thanks to a technique for cutting through the "heat haze" that compromises the accuracy of today's instruments. The most accurate atomic clock we have now is regulated by the electrons of a single aluminium ion as they move between two different orbits with sharply defined energy levels. When an electron goes from the higher energy level to the lower it emits radiation of a precise frequency. That frequency is used to mark out time to an accuracy of better than 1 part in 1017, or 1 second in 3 billion years. That's pretty good, but it could be better. Infrared photons emanating from the background cause the two energy levels to shift by slightly different amounts..." [via io9 ]

We've been silent for a while, so here's a bunch of news from the world of clocks to catch up a bit... [from AdaFruit ] [from Automata Blog ] [from Makezine ] [from Automata Blog ]

From the Blackbird journal : Driven by a key-wound spring, the monk walks in a square, striking his chest with his right arm, raising and lowering a small wooden cross and rosary in his left hand, turning and nodding his head, rolling his eyes, and mouthing silent obsequies. From time to time, he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it. After over 400 years, he remains in good working order. Tradition attributes his manufacture to one Juanelo Turriano, mechanician to Emperor Charles V. The story is told that the emperor's son King Philip II, praying at the bedside of a dying son of his own, promised a miracle for a miracle, if his child be spared. And when the child did indeed recover, Philip kept his bargain by having Turriano construct a miniature penitent homunculus. [via Boing Boing ]

“This machine is so much of an ORRERY, as is sufficient to shew [sic] the different lengths of days and nights, the vicissitudes of the seasons, the retrograde motion of the nodes of the Moon’s orbit, the direct motion of the apogeal point of her orbit, and the months in which the Sun and Moon must be eclipsed.” - James Ferguson, 1764 This is an interpretation of an orrery built by the Scottish Astronomer James Ferguson in 1750. The original does not survive, but there is much information about it in Ferguson's writings. We've posted about Ferguson and his Orrery before , and you can read more information about it at our /museum page. Watch this space! And you'll see a lot more about these fascinating little devices.