Time wheel
The time wheel ( Hungarian : Időkerék ) is the largest hourglass in the world. It is not far from Heroes' Square , on the edge of the city park in Hungary's capital Budapest . With her, Hungary celebrated joining the European Union on May 1, 2004 . The inventor of the time wheel is János Herner .
technical description
The time wheel is a wheel with a diameter of 8 m and a width of 2.5 m. The materials were steel , laminated safety glass and red granite used. The total weight of the watch is 60 tons. An hourglass comparable in size to 6 m in height can only be found in the sand museum of the Japanese city of Nima. The terms are one year each.
It is framed by a blue ring made of stainless steel, which was supposed to absorb the forces occurring as transport protection and to protect the granite. Furthermore, it ensures the stability of the wheel, which is composed of various stone elements with a thickness of 22 cm. A total of 30 tons of Indian granite were used for the monument.
The two containers containing the 4.5 cubic meters of glass granulate were made of laminated glass. The advantage of the granulate compared to normal sand is that the grains of the same size do not damage the surface of the container and have a precisely defined flow speed. This equally large, pure, absolutely dry and impact-resistant granulate moves in pressurized nitrogen . About 137 mm³ of granules trickle from the upper container into the lower one per second.
In order to control the flow, there is a control mechanism in the center of the time wheel. This makes it possible to compensate for weather influences and to adapt the watch to leap years .
Every year on New Year's Eve, after the last grain of sand has trickled through the clock at midnight, the clock is turned by two people by 180 ° using a lever and thus started again.
Emergence
The cultural historian and inventor János Herner had the idea for a time wheel back in 1983 . He described his design as follows: "Originally it was even supposed to move". “The aim was to represent time vividly, in a distance, so the 60-ton hourglass shouldn't just be set up, but also rolled slowly - hence the shape. Within 87 years the time wheel would have wandered from the Kunsthalle to the Ajtósi Dürer fasor ”. In 1998 he finally received permission from the Budapest City Council to set up the clock in this form. However, it soon turned out that an underground car park should be built under the street. As a result of this project, it was no longer certain that the asphalt surface of the street would withstand the weight of the clock. It was decided to move the time wheel behind the art gallery and anchor it firmly to the ground.
The stonemason company "Renaissance" based in Üröm received the order for the construction of the monument, as they had already gained experience with major projects through restoration work on St. Stephen's Basilica and the parliament building in Budapest. The connection between stone and steel was particularly difficult. In addition, it was difficult to develop a mechanism that made it possible to turn the huge hourglass, the weight of a diesel locomotive, once a year with human power alone.
The filling of the clock was celebrated on the edge of the artificial ice rink near Heldenplatz. For this purpose, a large funnel decorated with flags of the European Union was set up, into which anyone could pour a spoon of "sand". János Herner described it with the words: “Those interested can put in a spoonful of sand and thus a spoon of their own time.” In the first week, around 30,000 people took advantage of this offer, including many politicians and diplomats from the various country embassies. Everyone who put a spoonful of sand into the clock received a certificate on which a code and the exact time at which he / she had put the sand into the container was entered. After the inauguration, everyone should be able to use their code on the Internet to see “how things are in the hourglass about their time”.
Other countries, such as Germany and China, also showed their interest in the time wheel. The Chinese government asked if you could acquire a license to set up your own clock in Beijing .
criticism
There was a lot of criticism of the monumental work, especially among the Budapest population . Among other things, the oversized hourglass was found to be far too expensive. The Chancellery in Budapest published a calculation in the following form:
- Construction: 350 million forints (of which 240 million HUF alone came from the state)
- Maintenance costs: 37 million forints (7-10 million HUF per year for turning over)
- Guarding: 3–4 million forints
- Cleaning: 3–5 million forints (cleaning of the watch itself and the area around it)
- Technical operation: 3-5 million forints (12-14 million forints should be needed to set up a computer network in an office to run the clock)
Many Hungarians and Budapesters were and still are of the opinion that nobody needs this monument and that it was simply a prestige object of the government in Budapest.
Another point of criticism was that the watch was faulty and had to be serviced frequently. The first repair was required when the time wheel was commissioned for the first time. Later, during maintenance work for the New Year's Eve celebration in 2005, it was said that the clock had stopped because a "grain of sand" had gotten into the gearbox. The reason for this was speculated that water seeped into the clock and turned the granulate into a tough and no longer free-flowing mass.
The CEO of the Khronos Foundation , which is responsible for the maintenance of the time wheel , pointed out that in order to prevent such an effect, sand had been avoided and the glass granulate had been preferred. These rumors were also officially rejected. It was said that the clock was deliberately stopped. The inventor János Herner said: “After the rain we had to pump water out of the shaft. For this we had to stop the clock. So we noticed that the time wheel was leaking and the gas that was supposed to prevent the formation of mist in the time wheel had escaped. That's why we didn't restart the clockwork immediately. When the repairs and the scheduled maintenance work have been completed, the time wheel will work properly again. ” He went on to explain: “ You won't even notice a delay, we will make up for the delay via a computer. ”
Another point of criticism is the fact that the area around the time wheel turned into a muddy swamp after prolonged rainfall, which meant that visitors could only view the monument from a distance. Later even the information signs disappeared, with the result that numerous tourists stood in front of it with perplexed looks about the meaning of the monument.
Web links
- Herner: Photos of the clock
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b For seafarers, doctors and for telephoning . In: Märkische Allgemeine . March 27, 2012, p. 2 .
Coordinates: 47 ° 30 ′ 46 ″ N , 19 ° 4 ′ 49 ″ E