Dear Professor Wellesley, I greatly enjoyed your recent visit from Oxford, and thank you immensely for the fine leather-bound tome in which I now write these lines. I am still uncertain as to why the academic community might be interested in the diary of one such as I, but as both you and the Master believe the exercise to be of value, I will honor your request. For your convenience, I am transcribing these notes in English, however inartfully. Upon your suggestion, I offer a brief introduction to those in the academic community who might one day read this volume. My name is Ernst, and I am the product of over twenty years of painstaking research and construction—the creation and property of Karl Gruber, easily the greatest clockmaker in all of Germany, if not the world, a man credited with designing magnificent automated clocks in Frankfurt, London, Prague, and Vienna, among many other cities. My “birth”—the moment at which I was first wound and became aware of the world—occurred on 11 July 1887.
