STRETCHING THE CONFINES OF TIME.

• Position: New exhibition at Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago - Brief Article

A new exhibition, simply titled "Time," features not only the most spectacular display of historic timepieces anywhere, it seeks to address the elusive nature of time itself. Featuring more than 1,500 timekeeping pieces, of which about 450 will be on display at any one time (the rest will be rotated into the exhibition over the run), it is designed to teach, entertain, and provoke thought.

Among the most fascinating are two timepieces, one an eight-foot-tall majestic Tokugawa tower clock, the other a clean-lined, file cabinet-shaped, minimalist hydrogen maser clock. Though the two could not seem more different, each has managed to achieve the same goal: to stretch the confines of time.

The Tokugawa clock achieves this by keeping temporal time--in other words, by tracking hours that can be lengthened or shortened depending on the season or time of...