In Stanley Abercrombie’s biography George Nelson: The Design of Trendy Design, Nelson reminisced about that 1947 night in his workplace:
“And there was one night time when the ball clock bought developed, which was one of many actually humorous evenings. [Isamu] Noguchi got here by, and Bucky Fuller got here by. I’d been seeing lots of Bucky these days, and right here was Irving and right here was I, and Noguchi, who cannot preserve his palms off something, you understand – it’s a marvelous, itchy factor he is bought – he noticed we had been engaged on clocks and he began making doodles. Then Bucky type of brushed Isamu apart. He mentioned, ‘It is a good technique to do a clock,’ and he made some totally absurd factor. Everyone was taking a crack at this … pushing one another apart and making scribbles.
In some unspecified time in the future we left – we had been out of the blue all drained, and we would had a little bit bit an excessive amount of to drink – and the following morning I got here again, and right here was this roll [of drafting paper], and Irving and I checked out it, and someplace on this roll there was the ball clock. I do not know to at the present time who cooked it up. I do know it wasn’t me. It may need been Irving, however he didn’t suppose so … [We] each guessed that Isamu had in all probability performed it as a result of [he] has a genius for doing two silly issues and making one thing extraordinary … out of the mixture … [Or] it might have been an additive factor, however, anyway, we by no means knew. So we did the ball clock, which was, in its piddling method, a type of all-time best-seller for Howard [Miller, because] out of the blue it was determined by Mrs. America that this was the clock to place in your kitchen. Why [the] kitchen, I don’t know. However each advert that confirmed a kitchen for years after that had a ball clock in it.”
