Clocks

One of the city's most visible landmarks, the City Hall clock tower, will be outfitted with cellular telephone relay equipment. But image-conscious council members say most of the equipment will be hidden from view. "This will not harm the integrity of our landmark," Mayor Marilyn Bruce Hastings said. "No one will ever know it's there." Officials said they are not sure when the clock tower was erected. The City Hall building was dedicated in 1969.

Humans first harnessed the atom at the University of Chicago in 1942. On the University of Chicago campus, a Henry Moore sculpture pays homage to that storied chain reaction. In an auditorium a short walk away, another symbol of the Nuclear Age recently sat center stage. It was time again to set the Doomsday Clock.

Public clocks are back. Big time. Last year's graduating class of Chapman University in Orange donated a street clock to the school. Restoration of the 1930s Stedman Jewelers Clock on Harbor Boulevard in Fullerton is being funded by the city's redevelopment agency. Community efforts are underway to restore the 80-year-old William H. Spurgeon Building clock on 4th Street in Santa Ana. Why all the fuss over big tickers?

A new library tower clock with chimes was dedicated this week on the third-floor patio of the Cypress College Library. Alan Lombardi, a spokesman for the community college, said the clock dedication launches the 30th anniversary celebrations for Cypress College. The new clock and chimes will honor Nilane A. Lee, a 14-year member of the North Orange County Community College District, which governs Cypress College. Lee died Nov. 21.

It seems as though people can hardly sit still anymore without looking at their watches. Even when we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves, like at lunch or the ballgame, arms twist up and eyes glance down. For what? For the time, of course. As in, we're running out of it. "Sorry, I don't have the time" has become an all-purpose observation, explanation and excuse in urban America. And who is responsible? Well, Dennis D. McCarthy says it's not him. "If we could help, we would.

In a tiny shop nestled between storefronts along bustling Avenida Del Mar, a dying art is quietly being kept alive. Surrounded by hundreds of intricate timepieces, interrupted occasionally by the sweet chimes of antique clocks, two craftsmen from the tiny country of Macedonia patiently and expertly practice the old-world skill of clock and watch restoration.

Tired of spending time resetting clocks and watches twice a year for Daylight Saving Time, which starts at 2 a.m. Sunday? Then give Daniel Marvosh a minute to tell you about the clock system he has invented that automatically compensates for long winter nights and long summer days. His "sunrise clock" adds a few seconds a day for half the year and subtracts a few seconds the other half. If the world adopted his way of telling time, he says, everyone's life would be brighter.

Fred Carspecken is like clockwork. He visits the canyon fire road that runs off Laguna's Moulton Meadows Park between Arch Beach Heights and Top of the World at the same time every day. But today he is late. "I was thrown off my routine," he says, arriving for his daily walk with his dog, Otis, a Rhodesian ridgeback. A very precise and particular fellow, Carspecken would tell you himself that he is completely a creature of habit.

It's anyone's guess when the 82-year-old clock atop the W.H. Spurgeon Building stopped telling time. Some longtime residents say the four-faceted clock stopped after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. Others say it worked for a while after a 1985 renovation but then stopped. All agree that the clock--frozen on three sides at 5:05--now tells the correct time only twice a day. (The fourth side lacks a minute hand.

OK, it's understandable. Transportation planners need the surety of a good clock. After all, hundreds of employees need to be accurately clocked-in if the buses in Orange County are to run on time. But $457,280 for a new timepiece system to keep tabs on bus mechanics? It's a question that surfaced Thursday at an Orange County Transportation Authority committee meeting. "I'm trying to get my arms around why we're paying $125,000 just for the software. . . .