or third after leap year? What
is the current month of the year, and what day of the month and
of the week? Which of the planets is dominant? What days of the
year do the various feasts fall on, and the movable feasts
during the ecclesiastical year? And many other similar
questions, which I pass over here for the sake of brevity.

Besides, this device can be so arranged for any time
whatsoever, past or future, and for the longitude of any
region, and can be so manipulated by hand, that within the
space of a very short time there can be provided in their
proper order, the various orbits of the luminous bodies, their
alternating eclipses, as many as have taken place through the
course of many years, or even from the beginning of the world;
or those that will be seen as long as the world itself shall
last, with all their attendant circumstances (year, month, day,
duration, magnitude, etc.). All these can be seen with great
satisfaction of curiosity and of learning, and hence with great
pleasure to the soul. In the meanwhile, the little bells
continually play, at their proper, respective times. So that,
all exaggeration aside, a thousand years pass, in the sight of
this clock, as one day!

I am aware of your complaints, O star-loving reader--that my
description is too meager and too succinct. Lay the blame for
this on those cares, hateful both to me and to you, more
pressing, which forbid me and deprive you of a methodical
explanation of the work.

THE CLOCK MOVEMENT

Father Borghesi specified that the entire mechanism was equal in weight
to a seventh part of a _Centenarii Germanici_, a Germanic hundredweight.
This is probably the Austrian centner which is equivalent to 123.4615
pounds. Therefore, the clock mechanism weighs approximately 17.6 pounds.

The clock operated for a hundred days and more at a single winding,
according to Father Borghesi, and by means of a pendulum with a leaden
bob weighing 60 Viennese pounds, attached at a height of 5 feet. Father
Borghesi stated the weight of the pendulum to be 60 _librarum
Viennensium_, but the Viennese libra does not appear among the weights
of the Austrian Empire. However, using the average libra, an ancient
Roman unit of weight equal to 0.7221 pound, it may be assumed that the
driving weight should be approximately 45 pounds.

Father Borghes