History Main / ClockPunk

* "Turn me On" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVw7eJ0vGfM]] by ''Music/DavidGuetta'' featuring ''Music/NickiMinja'' being involved in various gear-based shenanigans.

* "Turn me On" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVw7eJ0vGfM]] by ''Music/DavidGuetta'' featuring ''Music/NickMinja'' being involved in various gear-based shenanigans.

* One of the most seminal works of "steampunk", Creator/KWJeter's ''Infernal Devices'', is actually clockpunk (there's actually no steam-based technology at all in the novel). Every odd bit of tech ran on a genius inventor's clockwork gears, including a device that could destroy the world with resonant vibrations. It's in the sequel novel ''Fiendish Schemes'', which has a TimeSkip of almost a decade and the inventor's MadScientist technology was sold to the Royal Society by his son, that steam engine technology is introduced and a resultant technological revolution has happened is when the story becomes true steampunk.

As the basic technology predates steam, clockpunk devices need another source of power. Wind or water mills can fit, but clockpunk machines may literally have to be wound with a key. [[FridgeLogic Science-savvy audiences may note that the amount of energy stored in a clockpunk device often seems far greater than the amount of energy it takes to rewind them.]] Given such practical problems, writers who don't want to just HandWave things may resort to more fantastical power sources, such as gunpowder -- or, very often, FunctionalMagic or UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}}. Fascinatingly enough, the latter fits the [[UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance Renaissance]][=/=][[BaroqueMusic Baroque]] style of the genre very well; this was the last era of European history when serious scientists could study such things without losing all credibility. Clockpunk settings may mix of their Renaissance[=/=]Baroque feel with lighthearted fantasy; due to FantasyGunControl, mixing Clockpunk tech with FunctionalMagic is less of a strain on WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief than more advanced technologies.

* The mechanical calculators. Later models (after 1930s) could have several ''thousand'' gears. See for example [[http://home.vicnet.net.au/~wolff/calculators/Categories.htm this page]] for web museum of mechanical calculators.

* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series has the [[OurElvesAreBetter Dunmeri]] [[PhysicalGod Tribunal]] [[DeityOfHumanOrigin Deity]] Sotha Sil who lives in a Clockwork City of his own creation, where he studies the "[[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow hidden world]]". There are plentiful gears and spindles, some reaching gigantic proportions, which act as death traps to invaders. Sotha Sil's creations reach full blown SchizoTech status, as he created complex computer systems, [[MechaMooks semi-organic cybernetic servants]], turned himself into a {{Cyborg}}, and may have even [[BrainUploading uploaded his own mind into his city]] (meaning he may not have been killed during the events of ''Tribunal'') all while the rest of the world was stuck in medieval stasis. You get to visit his city in both ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]''[='s=] ''Tribunal'' expansion and ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsOnline''[='s=] eponymous ''Clockwork City'' expansion.

* This is how Orbal energy works in the ''[[VideoGame/KisekiSeries Trails series]]''. Crystals called Septium composed of seven elements (water, fire, earth, wind, space, time, and mirage) are placed inside clocks that are wound up, releasing specific kinds of energy depending on the source. Stacked together with a circuit board inside a larger watch creates battle orbments, pocket watches that unleash spells. Interestingly, this occurs in a formerly middle-age society which quickly turns the old order on its head, forcing nobles to employ orbal users in their military and scramble to keep up in a technological arms race. The end result is a world gone SteamPunk by way of orbments in half a century. A few years later in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsOfColdSteel'', radios are becoming common with primitive computers having just been invented.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_al-Jazari Al-Jazari]], a medieval Middle-Eastern scientist, had many inventions, including a musical band made of Automatons, centuries(2 centuries, to be precise) before Leonardo.

* Japanese ''karakuri'' dolls and their 18th century European counterparts: Gear driven robots that could do things such as play music, serve food or write. Pretty much the direct ancestors of those creepy fembots they always show in Japanese tech exhibitions nowadays.

** Its successor, the analytical engine, had it ever been built, would have been the first ever general-purpose, programmable, Turing-complete, digital computing machine. How awesome is that?

* The [[https://www.middelaldercentret.dk/en Middelaldercentre (Medieval Center)]] is an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middelaldercentret open-air museum in Denmark]] wholly specialised in researching, recreating and presenting the various technologies of the Middle Ages, including some rare and overloked ones. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8JFclCipEY Here's]] a short but succinct video presentation on just some of the working replicas of mechanical medieval technology recreated for the museum. Some of the rarer or more unusual devices hadn't been built for over 500 years. A must-visit for any clockpuck afficionado.

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' have more [[FarEast Far Eastern]] varition of this and they got very few to several elements in Fire Nation's military as well, though out seasons (book) 1 and 2; And this punk was even explore in compare with {{Steampunk}} in season one episode when Gang visit Northern Air temple who now occupies by Earth kingdom refugees and their unofficial leader named "The Mechanist" who personality and talents in creating technology based on daVinci himself.
** [[spoiler:But only one of his inventions the Air Balloon (who now updated) is become plot element in two seasons later by Fire Nation's military advisor to capture remaining warriors that lose the invasion of Fire Nation's capital.]]

* While the setting in general isn't Clockpunk, Guts's left arm in ''{{Manga/Berserk}}'' definitely counts. It has a magnet in the palm so he can hold his sword, a repeating crossbow which can be attached to the top, and a gunpowder cannon that is built right into the arm. It may have been inspired by the similar right arm of Götz von Berlichengen (listed in Real Life).

* While the setting in general isn't Clockpunk, Gut's left arm in ''{{Manga/Berserk}}'' definitely counts. It has a magnet in the palm so he can hold his sword, a repeating crossbow which can be attached to the top, and a cannon. It may have been inspired by the similar right arm of Götz (listed in Real Life)

* A UsefulNotes/NASA proposal to study extremely harsh environments where digital computers would have a very hard time as UsefulNotes/Mercury or UsefulNotes/Venus (due to the intense heat), or the moons of Jupiter Io and Europa (due to the intense radiation) is the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton_Rover_for_Extreme_Environments AREE]] rover, basically a wind-powered (in Venus) automaton equipped with an analogic computer.

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* Numerous SCPs:

** The ''[[http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/alchemicalbaroque/ Alchemical Baroque]]'' setting book combines a dash of clockwork tech with a lot of 18th century FairyTale style.

* ''VideoGame/{{Okage}}: Shadow King'' has Madril, a town devoted to Clock Punk.

-->-- '''Music/MiracleOfSound''', ''[[VideoGame/Dishonored2 Clockworks]]''

->''Clockworks click and they clink within\\

The walls are closing in''

** In ''VideoGame/HypnospaceOutlaw'', one of the subcultures you visit as a moderator of a [[TheNineties GeoCities-influenced]] pseudo-internet is a ClockPunk fandom with its own quirks, stories (of [[StylisticSuck questionable]] [[HerCodeNameWasMarySue quality]] but a certain charming earnestness) and distinctly rough, DIY aesthetic.

This style of SpeculativeFiction seems to have arisen in the wake of of {{Steampunk}} (as a recognized phenomenon, at least; one can find a fair number of older clockpunk-like fictions). If that genre could be built on a lot of steam-powered technology and Victorian fashions and images, why not look a little further back, to the era that invented more basic technologies and had its own style? Hence, in Clockpunk stories, gears and simple machines predominate, and feature in both heavy machinery and portable devices. The visual style draws on the [[UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance Renaissance]] and [[BaroqueMusic Baroque]] eras, so mechanisms and casings will typically be adorned with intricate decorations and carvings, making some very beautiful-looking machinery if it's done right.

* [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-217 SCP-217]], a virus which turns the organisms it infects into clockwork creatures, in the Wiki/SCPFoundation.

* The ancient Greeks had some pretty advanced clockwork-style devices that we know next to nothing about, because the only surviving sample is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism Antikythera mechanism]], and the written record about their machines is very thin. But studies of the Antikythera mechanism put its complexity and craft as comparable to 18th century Europe.