What has snake hands and a cubic face?

Its clock face looks like a stack of cubes that can be inverted in the mind’s eye – outward tips become inward corners, sides that faced up to the left now face down to the right.

The clock’s hands look like snakes crawling on this undulating surface. They change shape as they twist and turn to form to the nooks and edges of the cubes. The fast moving second hand wriggles over the uneven surface like a sidewinder negotiating stairs.

Actually, seen from the side, both the clock face and hands are flat and parallel. The cube design is printed on the face, and the hour, minute and second hands are segmented and motorized to produce the correct S curves, seen from the front, for each degree of rotation.

The illusion is complete, and strangely, no matter how one mentality shifts the cubic face, the curved snakes seem to cling realistically to it. One thing is certain – it always shows the correct time.