A cuckoo clock , or elliptically cuckoo , is a clock whose ringing imitates the cry of the cuckoo.

The concept of clock to cuckoo would have been created by Franz Ketterer, in 1738, in the village of Schönwald, in Black Forest (Germany). The traditional, definite model about 1850, is presented typically in the form of a mural Horloge to apparent beam, driven by a counterweight, with a case decorated in the shape with Chalet or tree trunk. The particular ringing combines an imitation of the cry of the cuckoo with a chime. At each exact hour or half an hour, the doors open and a mechanical bird emerges from sound Nid and sings.

Today, the modern cuckoos , generally simpler and more compact, have of movements with quartz and electronic ringings using of synthetic sounds or digitized.

Quotation

“(...), during 30 years in Italy under the Borgia S, they had the war, terror, of the murders and the massacres, but there also was Michel-Angel, Léonard de Vinci and the Renaissance. In Suisse they had 500 years of brotherly love, democracy and peace, and what did that produce? the cuckoo! ” said by the Harry character Files (played and written by Orson Welles) in Holly in the film the Third Man , realized in 1949 by Carol Reed.

original Quotation on Wikiquote/en