The Harold Lloyd Alarming Clock comes in several parts.
There is the actual clock, which is of course a small replica of the famous timepiece from which he dangled precariously in the 1923 classic silent comedy film Safety Last!
The next item is the back-drop. This is a low relief version of the vertiginous building and street-scape. You attach this part to your wall, with the clock fixed to it roughly at head height.
The most engineered part of the whole apparatus is the Harold LLoyd figure himself. He is a wind-up automata marvel, who will grip unto the hour hand and adjust his dangling pose as the clock turns.
At the appointed hour which you have previously set, his grip will fumble and relax, allowing him to fall with a satisfying clatter unto a previously concealed ledge that shoots out from the background.
This shelf acts as the snooze control and begins slowly retracting as LLoyd's mechanical finger tips grip along its outside edge.
Failure to interrupt this action leads to him fall again unto a toy truck, with a trampoline on its back, which appears from the double doors of a car park at the base of the building.
With careful positioning the flying Lloyd figure, legs waving wildly in the air, can be made to finally land in a heap in middle of your bed.-- xenzag, Feb 23 2007 Safety Last ! http://en.wikipedia...:Safety_Last%21.jpgWake up please !! [xenzag, Feb 23 2007] I used to love watching Harold Lloyd on TV - but haven't seen him on the box now since the 80's.
An alternate version of the clock could be an arrangement of moving steel beams, along which the automaton Harold blindly walks, their movements delicately scheduled so that each time he steps off the end of one, another beam rises, turns or sinks into place in order to save him from falling.-- zen_tom, Feb 23 2007 nice.-- po, Feb 23 2007 Widely known to exist. I've seen it in some old black-and-white movie, and it looked very life-like. [+]-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 23 2007 Heh[+]-- skinflaps, Feb 23 2007 random, halfbakery