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Concept
Clock of the Long Now
Summary
The Clock of the Long Now, also called the 10,000-year clock, is a mechanical clock under construction that is designed to keep time for 10,000 years. It is being built by the Long Now Foundation. A two-meter prototype is on display at the Science Museum in London. , two more prototypes are on display at The Long Now Museum & Store at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.
The project was conceived by Danny Hillis in 1986. The first prototype of the clock began working on December 31, 1999, just in time to display the transition to the year 2000. At midnight on New Year's Eve, the date indicator changed from 01999 to 02000, and the chime struck twice.
The manufacture and site construction of the first full-scale prototype clock is being funded by Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions, with $42 million, and is on land which Bezos owns in Texas.
In the words of Stewart Brand, a founding board member of the foundation, "Such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well-engineered, would embody deep time for people. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think."
The basic design principles and requirements for the clock are:
Longevity: The clock should be accurate even after 10,000 years, and must not contain valuable parts (such as jewels, expensive metals, or special alloys) that might be looted.
Maintainability: Future generations should be able to keep the clock working, if necessary, with nothing more advanced than Bronze Age tools and materials.
Transparency: The clock should be understandable without stopping or disassembling it; no functionality should be opaque.
Evolvability: It should be possible to improve the clock over time.
Scalability: To ensure that the final large clock will work properly, smaller prototypes must be built and tested.
Official source
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