Update 2, Sept. 22: Make Your Own Clock in 20 Seconds!
Update Sept. 22, 2015:
Former New Jersey Supreme Court Judge Andrew Napolitano says Ahmed’s family could be liable for fraud charges.
The mystery concerning Ahmed Mohamed’s clock creation continues to deepen.
On Sept. 18, NewsTalkFlorida.com brought you news explaining how Ahmed’s dad, Mohamed ElHassan Mohamed, owns a record of Muslim activism.
Published reports from several media outlets expressed suspicion that the entire clock affair might’ve been politically-driven narrative and now an electronic expert claims the clock was simply removed from its store-bought case and put into the attache.
Just to re-cap: Ahmed carried a homemade “clock” to school as a science project. He demonstrated the clock, which was built into an attache case and looked very much like a bomb detonation timer, to one of his engineering teachers who instructed him not to show it around the school.
Ahmed failed to heed the first teacher’s warning and brought the case to English class where the teacher, concerned about the clock, called the police. Ahmed was arrested — under a statute that makes it illegal to create objects that even resemble a hoax bomb — and questioned. Irving Police said the boy proved evasive during questioning.
Dallas television station WFAA interviewed James McLellan of the Irving Police Department: “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only say it was a clock. He didn’t offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school.”
Ahmed was later released, but the incident quickly evolved into a cause celebre as Barack Obama invited him to the White House via Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg offered him an internship at Facebook and he received offers for visits to MIT and NASA.
Now, an electronics expert Thomas Talbot produced a four-minute video explaining that Ahmed basically took the guts of a commercial alarm clock and placed it in a briefcase.
“What this is is a commercial alarm clock, as you would purchase in any department store and use at your bedside. All he did was remove the plastic case from the alarm clock. This is not an invention. This is not something that someone built or even assembled,” Talbot said.
Signs of Higher Level Manufacture
Talbot said the clock is made for 120-volt Alternating Current (AC) or what would essentially be a device plugged into a typical wall outlet.
“People who do ‘maker’ things do not tend to use AC power because it’s a bit more dangerous and there’s no reason to do it. You can use batteries,” Talbot said.
Circuit boards and ribbon cables also indicate industrial creation.
“The ribbon cables in between these are also indicative of a manufactured product. As a matter of fact, commercial clocks tend to have 9-volt battery backup and this even has the 9-volt battery backup. This was put in here to look like a device – with these cables and cords – this was put in here to look like a device that would be suspicious and, I think, intentionally so,” Talbot said.
Talbot concluded his case by saying Ahmed should not be credited as “an inventor”. His approach and reason for creating the video appears based on setting the record straight about Ahmed’s technical abilities and knowledge as opposed to debunking whether this was a planned narrative.
“Unfortunately, whether it fits your narrative or whatever you want to believe or not, this particular child down in Texas did not make anything. He did not make a clock. He simply took something out of the casing,” Talbot said. “People should not recognize this as an invention and recognize this child as an inventor for this particular creation when plenty of other kids have invented things.”
