During my museum visit I observed this weight-driven clock/counter.

The mechanism is designed so that a hand crank raises a weight. The weight then pulls on an escapement gear, providing energy at a constant rate. Small wooden pegs could be inserted into slots in the large horizontal wheel. As the wheel turned, it drove the two counters to its left and right.

The device was located in the attic. Unfortunately, because of the large slides that dominated the same room, a vast majority of the children visiting the room overlooked the clock completely. Instead, they ran directly up to the slides.

During my observation, there were around 5 children who did decide to play with the clock though. However, they were each around 3-4 years old and struggled to understand how the mechanism worked. Even the adults accompanying them could not figure out the clock most of the time. And when they did, they had to direct their children to turn the admittedly hard to notice crank at the bottom or use the wooden pegs, eliminating the child’s opportunity to learn and explore autonomously.

In the end, this clock, because of its complexity and failure to draw attention to key features (either by using bright colors, arrows, or simple visual directions), failed to really engage the children, who were very quickly drawn to the other objects in the room.