The Guardian colorfully corrects two recent articles that said cuckoo clocks are of Swiss origin:
Switzerland was linked with cuckoo clocks in two articles last week (Swiss launch competition to find new polyglot national anthem, 15 August, page 21; Fear of the unfortunate, 12 August, page 20), prompting one Swiss reader to point out that – while Orson Welles did once say, in the film The Third Man, that “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock” – such timepieces originated in Germany.
