Tempi duri

I have always been intrigued, half seriously and half playfully, by the observation that, aside from the realm of theoretical physics, there is only one category of objects that potentially possesses four dimensions: clocks. They are in fact the only objects that combine the three spatial dimensions with the temporal one.
Yet the vast majority fail to exploit this potential, being based on a flat dial with hands rotating on the same plane. In doing so, one spatial dimension is lost and the object falls back into the ordinary three dimensions of all others.
If one reflects on it, the earliest instruments for measuring time, such as sundials and hourglasses, were rightly four dimensional, and it is difficult to understand why their more evolved descendants should not be as well.