Heavenly Helium Hands

Imagine a balloon shaped like a dumbbell except one end is a stubby arrowhead and the other approximates its feathered rear. One side of the helium arrow is colored sky blue and the other is black like the hand of a clock.

In the middle of the thin “shaft” is an apparatus that can change the vertical angle of the arrow by pumping gas from one end to the other and by movement of a small weight. The weight can also keep the hand on the right keel for example to make an arrow point down to the right (5) or down to the left (7).

These free-floating clock hands could hover in a large lobby or terminal or drift a few meters over a town square on a calm day. Hour, minute and second hands would be identified by their proportions and size, and in the latter case by rotational speed. Several of each would be needed so the time could be seen from different points.

Clocks could be built with three hands turning on a common axle, or viewers could assemble the correct time themselves by finding separate hands.