With one glance at this automaton, you can quickly answer these questions: What hour the sun shows, the moon, any fixed star, the head and tail of the dragon. Is the sea swelling with periodic heat [at high tide?] or is it deflated [low tide], or quiescent? How many days is it from mean new moon or full moon? By how many signs and degrees is the moon distant from the sun, and from its nodes? What sign of the zodiac does the sun occupy, the moon, the head and tail of the dragon? Is the sun or the moon, in apogee or perigee, ascending or descending? What is the apparent speed of the sun and of the moon? What is the apparent magnitude of the solar and lunar diameter, and of the horizontal parallax of the umbra and penumbra of the earth? What is the latitude of the moon? Is it north or south? Does the moon hide [occult eclipse] any of the fixed stars from the earth dwellers, and which of these does it obscure? Is there a true new or full moon? Is the sun in eclipse anywhere on earth? What is the magnitude, and the duration of this eclipse, with respect to the whole earth? Can it be seen in the north or in the south? Is the moon in eclipse? Total or partial? Of what magnitude, etc.? What limb of the moon is obscured? How many years have passed from a given epoch? Is this year a leap year, or a common year--first, second, 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!