Sunday, December 04, 2005

The World's Largest Time Piece

On November 23rd, the street of Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse experienced the lighting of something new. The Christmas Illumination as it is called happens from November 24th until January 2nd every year on Zurich's famous Bahnhofstrasse. For the most part, the lights are illuminated from 4pm until 12am and again in the mornings from 6:30am until 8am daily.

The most interesting part of the street is the lights are modern and new as they are considered as the world's largest time piece. The time piece consists of 275 lighting rods with 32 clusters of 28 LED's, each weighing 60lbs lighting up the Bahnhofstrasse, consisting of about .8 miles in length. But what is different from past years is the amount of light saved by these new time pieces which amounts to about 80% less lighting than previously used.

The time piece constantly changes throughout the Christmas season and throughout the course of the day. The name "the timepiece" was conceived because it keeps track of time in a sense. I'm sure if I were there, I would have glazed over it as I went about my daily business.

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