Secrets of the Corpus Chronophage Unveiled at Royal College of Art Submitted By: Dr John C Taylor OBE Monday, 17 March 2014

Secrets of the Corpus Chronophage unveiled at Royal College of Art Submitted by: Dr John C Taylor OBE Monday, 17 March 2014

Noted inventor and horologist Dr John C Taylor OBE FREng will be delivering a speech at the Royal College of Art (http://www.rca.ac.uk/) in London on Wednesday March 19 2014. He will be speaking as part of a School of Design Research Symposium that examines time as the universal metric, a context for every object, life, event and alteration. The event, created by Stephen Boyd Davis, Research Leader, School of Design, involves five speakers discussing how we design with time, what time looks like, how we perceive it and how it feeds into how we live, act and remember. Historical, conceptual and cognitive problems will be examined by speakers from the areas of psychology, history, engineering and design. The speakers include BBC Broadcaster Claudia Hammond, Dr Sian Lindley from Microsoft, Historian Dr Matthew Shaw, and Dr Peter Bennett from Bristol Interaction & Graphics Lab. Dr John C Taylor is one of Britain’s greatest inventors. He was born in Buxton, Derbyshire, attended school on the Isle of Man and then later graduated in Natural Sciences from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Many of the hundreds of patents that Dr Taylor holds are for domestic appliances, thermostats and electrical equipment. His single most famous invention is the thermostat controls for the cordless kettle, patented and used throughout the world. It has been calculated that over two billion of Dr Taylor-designed bi-metal blades - used in thermostats to switch off kettles – have been produced since their invention in the 1970s. At an event in 2008, in the company of Stephen Hawking, Dr Taylor unveiled the Corpus Chronophage Clock which shows time moving both fast or slow at different times, but is always correct every five minutes. A huge metal sculpted grasshopper sits on top of the clock and metaphorically eats each minute as it passes. In Dr Taylor’s 40-minute talk, he will discuss the history of time-keeping and the work of his horological heroes. In particular, he will be discussing how he believes the design of the Corpus Clock reflects his views on time. The Wednesday March 19 event runs from 10:30 am to 4:30 pm at the RCA Darwin Building, Lecture Theatre 1, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU and is open to RCA students and a select number of guests. http://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/school-design-research-symposium/ Dr Taylor’s website is at www.johnctaylor.com - ENDS - If you are from outside the RCA and plan to attend, please email [email protected]

Page 1 Dr Taylor speaks at 12.10 PM. For further information please contact Tina Fotherby on 07703 409622, email [email protected] Photographs available on request

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