In the 19th century, Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin – a famous French magician - combined his love for illusions, science, and watch-making to create the very first “mysterious clocks”: clocks with an apparently invisible mechanism.
The great “mystery” of these clocks lies in their dials, which are made of crystal panels between which the numerals and hands are enclosed. These crystal panels, set inside an indented metal border, are animated via a mechanism hidden in the decorative base