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It is the late seventeenth century, and Pope Alexander VII awaits the latest demonstration of Italian ingenuity: a night clock, invented by brothers Matteo, Pietro Tommaso and Giuseppe Campani, that will enable the pontiff to read the time in the dark. Instead of hands, the clock has a rotating disc bearing the hours and fractions of the hour that are illuminated by a candle placed behind an opening in the dial. Some three centuries later, in October this year, HYT revealed its answer to night-time readability with H4, a watch that generates its own electricity. Between the two, watchmakers experimented with radioactivity before turning to less hazardous technologies, always with the aim of showing hours and minutes round the clock.
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