Kirsch-Hamilton Aurora Clocks

[Jonas Clark-Elliott]

Request by Barbarella for more about the clock in my sig. This was introduced first in the early 70s as the Rathcon "Spectrum." Soon after, it became the Kirsch-Hamilton "Aurora," and soon after, Kirsch-Hamilton was bought by Hampton-Haddon, a marketing company. The Kirsch-Hamilton/Hampton-Haddon clocks were made by Newton Plastics in Boston. Auroras were made in Japan for a while after Newton Plastics quit, and these had especially vivid colors. The polished aluminum T-shaped case, reminiscent of a periscope, was designed by Al Corchia & Rudolph DeHarak, and the clock was well-received enough to get a spot in MoMA's collection. This is a particularly unusual piece of moving mood lighting, and it's a functional and accurate clock, too.

 

The dial shows a black dot, and four black lines delineating the 12, 3, 6 and 9 positions. The background glows evenly, with no hot spots. The hour and minute hands are rectangular blocks, and the seconds hand is a circular spot. As the seconds hand revolves, everything changes color. Everything? The background has two main colors, mint green and orange, and shifts smoothly through a range of red, violet, purple, blue and turquoise. The main colors appear every 15 seconds. The seconds disk also changes color, usually being a deep blue-purple. The hour and minute hands are different colors depending on where they are around the dial, being paler near the 12, 3, 6 and 9 positions. There are still more color changes when the seconds disk overlaps the other hands, or where the other hands overlap each other, and the dial's colors change even more as your viewing angle changes. Were you to take the clock apart (not recommended, as they're difficult to re-assemble correctly) none of the plastics which make up the dial are colored; they're all either transparent with a smoky tint, or translucent white. And there's only a plain clear light bulb in the back. Where are the colors coming from?

 

Here is some footage of the Aurora in action, set to some appropriately spacey music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHl0mF7PlRI

 

The clock uses polarizing filters and an effect called bi-refractance to create the color changes. There are stacks of polarizing plastics which, when rotated in front of each other, make the colors. When assembled, the filters must be aligned correctly to get the colors to come out right. These used an incandescent bulb, which sometimes cooked the filters with age, creating duller colors and, with time, turning them to ugly sepia tones. My Aurora was restored by a firm on the east coast (Newton Plastics, I think) in the late 80s after all Aurora production was over, and they added a handy built-in light switch. It was given another fix-up last year by Barry Gamble of Chrono-Art. Gamble makes new Auroras and some other odd clocks, and restores old ones. His new Auroras use multicolor LEDs that don't make much heat, and they change color so that the clock doesn't just repeat its colors twice a minute, though I prefer my old one that has the mystery heightened by there being only a white bulb in the back.

 

I first saw the Aurora in a Seattle shop. The owner came out and asked, "Hey, you collect lava lamps. Ever seen an Aurora clock?" I hadn't, so he brought one out, in great shape. It was his own, and he had decided to sell it, for $400 (a fair price, I now know). I watched it and loved it. A short time later, he came out, unplugged it, and said, "I just can't bear to part with it." A wise choice. I've seen one other in a store since then, and it was $300 and in terrible shape. They come up on eBay every so often, but I'd suggest showing one you like to Mr. Gamble and asking what he thinks of the price and condition before buying. I purchased mine off bay-area Craigslist, after running it by Gamble.The Rathcon Spectrums and the Japanese Auroras are not repairable; if the motor or filters are through, the only thing you can do is have the works entirely replaced. I've seen photos of ONE Spectrum with okay colors, and that's one more good Spectrum than Mr. Gamble has seen.

 

Mine had a Japanese base cover added (when it was fixed up by Newton) and I had Gamble swap it with an American cover with a label, to assign a serial number to it (though it's impossible to know its original number). I picked a nice-looking cover from the stack of spare old ones he had (customers sometimes have him replace it with a new type of cover he makes that has rubber feet on it) and he then told me that the serial number on the cover I chose, 40010, was notable because approximately 40,000 Auroras were made by Newton, making this cover one of the absolute last!

 

Attached are a few photos of nice ones. For a short time in the 90s, Gamble also made a few gold-plated Auroras. Other clocks using the polarized light effects are the Kirsch-Hamilton Spectra aka the Black Hole, the Kirsch-Hamilton Prisma, and the Chrono-Art Lumina and TimeWave. Chrono-Art also makes two reproductions of the Prisma, one closer to the original and one updated. I've seen these in person at Gamble's workshop, and they're all very pretty, the TimeWave being especially impressive, but the Aurora is still the classic and my favorite. In fact, it's one of my favorite items in my entire collection; I never get tired of watching it.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/Original-1970-Psychedelic-Aurora-Color-Change-C...

This is what a badly-faded Aurora looks like, though they do get far worse than this one. Also: "...not the modern LED model that cost over $700"?? New ones are $699, but they look a hundred times better than this faded thing. If you look at the quad of photos near the bottom, the background color should be, clockwise from upper left: turquoise, green-blue, orange, and red-orange.

[ElectricAstro]

Thanks so much for letting me know Jonas! I love these clocks, and they sit perfect near lava lamps, it would be so cool if the company had turned them into lamps, it would have been amazing. They are so very beautiful,

 

Many thanks!

[Bohdan]

They are so cool looking. The colors are beautiful.  I also saw the Prima TL models on this page.  Great forum on these clocks.

 

http://www.chronoart.com/p2.html

[Bohdan]

Reminds me of the Flow of Lava thru a Time clock. Your Video was very cool to watch.

[Jonas Clark-Elliott]

That clock you posted, Bohdan, is one of Gamble's own designs, and is beautiful in person. Once you figure out how to read it, you can do it at a glance and really confuse visitors.

[George]

wow guys they are really nice clocks , very cool!

[Jonas Clark-Elliott]

The one Bohdan posted isn't a polarized light display. It uses LEDs.