vv2

[Dave Monroe]

... but on that clock in Dr. Schoenmaker's waitng room (V., pp. 40-1, HP
ed.), has anybody constructed (virtually, on paper, in imagine, or
otherwise) a model of this?  Anything of particular, or at least
possible, significance besides that mirror time, yet another mirror in
the veritable hall thereof (and recall the Hall at Versailles ...) to be
found in the pages of V. (and, yeah, that open book factor there, "V,"
but I still wanna know, what about that period)?

That idiosyncratic "pendulum," that disc, anybody know if any such
device actually works, and/or exists?  Has been a long time for me, but
an interesting reference here might be Otto Mayr, Authority, Liberty and
Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
UP, 1989?).  Much of interest in re: philosophy, politics and
escapements.  See also Mayr's The Origins of Feedback Control, and, as I
recall, he's written, assembled and/or (co)edited a coupla museum
catalogs on historic clocks as well ...

But those "two imps or demons," "Mounted on the disc" (41), well, of
course, not only perhaps alluding to Maxwell's Demon (which should be
well-known to all here, so ... but, well, entropy, negentropy, and so
forth ...), but also reminds me of that "two-handed engine" (i.e.,
despite all the apparent interpretative consternation thereupon, a
clock; as I recall, Harold Bloom at least catches that in his Agon:
Towards a Theory of Revisionism) in John Milton's "Lycidas" (!).  Er,
quick search here ... okay, @ lines 130-1 ...

But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

See, e.g., http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/milton2.html.
Yeah, I know, St. Michael's sword in Paradise Lost (er, Book VI, line
251?) but ...