3.
IMAGINE an elegant octagonal room with a high ceiling. The
room is about 30 foot across and has french windows along
the four sides of the room that face south. These windows
look out over extensive lawns that finally end in a shrubbery
and woods.
It
is a summer afternoon with clear blue skies
as far as you can see. The time is about 2:30 PM.
The room itself feels pleasantly warm and airy. The walls
are painted white and in their decoration and the matching
mouldings on the ceiling show the house to be built in the
18th century in the Georgian neo-classical style. The floor
is parquet and polished to a fine and rich glow. The only
furnishings in the room, which is otherwise bare, are a
Persian rug and a small table. The rug lies on the north
side of the room and measures 10 foot by 6 foot. Its colours
are generally lighter than usual and the abstract design
less elaborate. The small oval table stands in the middle
of the room.
On this table stands a machine of some sort, or maybe it
could better be called a mechanism or instrument. The
instrument is about 3 foot high and at its mahogany base
measures one foot by one foot. The overall impression is
that of a neat and complex arrangement of brass joints and
mechanical parts, and shiny steel rods, all in motion
that is both smooth and dignified. Atop the mechanism a
steel foliot rod rotates slowly, the two brass balls at
either end glinting as they turn. This escapement regulating,
as they say, the transfer of energy from the spring to the
various gears. The whole machine is a combination of many
such correct regulations. Stepping back from it and closing
your eyes you hear well oiled clicking noises against a
background of the distant noises from the gardens outside.
A blackbird singing and the sound of a small group of
people approaching the house.
