now

George Nelson recalls the iconic design of the Ball Clock as being a result
of a night of drinking with friends and associates, Isamu Noguchi, Bucky
Fuller, and Irving Harper.

“And there was one night when the ball clock got developed, which was one of
the really funny evenings. Noguchi came by, and Bucky Fuller came by. I’d
been seeing a lot of Bucky those days, and here was Irving and here was I,
and Noguchi, who can’t keep his hands off anything, you know- it is a
marvelous, itchy thing he’s got- he saw we were working on clocks and he
started making doodles. Then Bucky sort of brushed Isamu aside. He said,
“This is a good way to do a clock,” and he made some utterly absurd thing.
Everybody was taking a crack at this,…pushing each other aside and making
scribbles.

At some point we left- we were suddenly all tired, and we’d had a little bit
too much to drink- and the next morning I came back, and here was this roll
(of drafting paper), and Irving and I looked at it, and somewhere in this
roll there was a ball clock. I don’t know to this day who cooked it up. I
know it wasn’t me. It might have been Irving, but he didn’t think so…(we)
both guessed that Isamu had probably done it because (he) has a genius for
doing two stupid things and making something extraordinary…out of the
combination….(or) it could have been an additive thing, but, anyway, we
never knew.”

George Nelson: The Design of Modern Design; p.111

P.S.: Many years later however, Irving Harper, stated that he was the actual
designer of the Ball Clock. But since nothing was officially written down on
paper, the mystery will always remain…