The Clockwork Inventions of John Muir

The Father of the American Environmental Movement was a gadget building genius during his school days at the University of Wisconsin.This is John Muir's clockwork desk. He built it while attending the University of Wisconsin in 1862. "I invented a desk in which the books I had to study were arranged in order at the beginning of each term. I also made a bed which set me on my feet every morning at the hour determined on, and in dark winter mornings just as the bed set me on the floor it lighted a lamp. Then, after the minutes allowed for dressing had elapsed, a click was heard and the first book to be studied was pushed up from a rack below the top of the desk, thrown open, and allowed to remain there the number of minutes required. Then the machinery closed the book and allowed it to drop back into its stall, then moved the rack forward and threw up the next in order, and so on, all the day being divided according to the times of recitation, and time required and allotted to each study."

Among Muir’s many other creations was an "early-rising bed" - an alarm clock-like device that would raise a sleeper to an upright position at the appointed hour of awakening.

First Posted 1st May 2009 by Frank L Anderson