Hye-jin Park's Trace Line Clock Shows Hours and Minutes with Just One Hand

Maker Hye-jin Park has turned an off-the-shelf quartz clock movement into something unusual — by putting it in control of a single "hand" that shows both minutes and hours simultaneously.

"I always want to look time in new ways," Park explains. "I want to create my own watch design. So this is the watch I've newly created. The minute and hour hands are connected by a single line, constantly shifting to new angles and lengths as they trace the passage of time. The constantly changing hand make it Every time you check the time, you see a fresh, new perspective on the hour, making it truly captivating."

There's no microcontroller here, no Wi-Fi connectivity required, and the clock movement itself is entirely off-the-shelf — a battery-powered quartz movement normally found in desk and wall clocks and designed to drive separate hour and minute hands.

In Park's clock, though, there's only one hand — a black line that, through a cleverly thought-out linkage, marks out the passing of hours on the clock face's smaller inner circle while more rapidly indicating the minutes on a larger outer circle.

"The minute hand moves faster than the hour hand," Park explains of the constantly-shifting line that results. "Therefore, the hand moves outward in a large circle, using the hour hand as its reference point. This is why the length and angle of the hand constantly change."

The full build is documented on Instructables.