The "Long Now Clock," also known as the 10,000-Year Clock, is a mechanical clock under construction that is intended to tell time for 10,000 years. It is being built by the Long Now Foundation.
A two-meter-long prototype is on display at the Science Museum in London. Since June 2018, two further prototypes have been on display at the Long Now Museum & Store in the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The project was conceived by Danny Hillis in 1989.
The first prototype of the clock began operating on December 31, 1999, right on time for the transition into the year 2000. At midnight on New Year's Eve, the date display changed from 01999 to 02000, and the bell struck twice.
The manufacture and construction of the first full-size prototype of the clock is being funded by Jeff Bezos' investment firm, Bezos Expeditions, with $42 million and will take place on land owned by Bezos in the Sierra Diablo Mountains of Texas. Stewart Brand, a founding member of the foundation, said: "Such a clock, if impressive and technically sophisticated, would embody people's understanding of time."
It should be fascinating, thought-provoking, and so famous that it becomes an icon in public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what images of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons change the way people think.”[3] Design I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances every hundred years, and the cuckoo appears at the turn of the millennium. I want the cuckoo to appear every millennium for the next 10,000 years.
If I hurry, I should finish the clock in time to see the cuckoo come out for the first time. — Danny Hillis, “The Millennium Clock”, Wired Scenarios, 1995[4] The basic design principles and requirements for the clock are:[5] Longevity: The clock should still keep accurate time after 10,000 years and must not contain any valuable parts (such as jewels, expensive metals, or special alloys) that could be plundered.
Maintenance-friendliness: Future generations should be able to repair the clock, if necessary, using tools and materials from the Bronze Age. Transparency: The clock should be understandable without stopping or disassembling it; no function should be opaque. Further development:
The clock should be capable of being improved over time. Scalability: To ensure that the final, full-size clock functions flawlessly, smaller prototypes must be built and tested. Whether the clock will actually be maintained and serviced over such a long period is questionable.
Hillis chose the target of 10,000 years to be just within the realm of plausibility. There are technological artifacts, such as fragments of pots and baskets, that are 10,000 years old. So there are precedents for human artifacts surviving for such a long time, although very few human artifacts have been continuously cared for over more than a few centuries.
Energy Considerations: Many options for powering the watch were considered, but most were rejected due to their inability to meet the requirements. For example, nuclear power and solar energy systems would violate the principles of transparency and longevity. Ultimately, Hillis opted for the regular manual winding of a drop weight to update the dial, as the watch's design already incorporates regular human maintenance.
However, the clock is designed to tell the time even without being wound: "If it is left unattended for a longer period of time, it uses the energy generated by the temperature differences between day and night on the mountaintop to power its timekeeping mechanism."
Considerations for Timekeeping: The timekeeping mechanism of such a long-lasting watch must be reliable, robust, and precise. The following options were considered as timekeepers for the watch but rejected:
Autonomous Clocks: Most of these methods are inaccurate (the clock loses the correct time over time) but reliable (i.e., the clock does not suddenly stop). Other methods are precise but opaque (i.e., the clock is difficult to read or understand). Gravity pendulum (inaccurate in the long term, requires many cycles, leading to wear) Torsion pendulum (fewer cycles, but less accurate) Balance wheel (less accurate than a pendulum) Water flow (inaccurate) Solid flow (inaccurate) Wear and corrosion (very inaccurate) Rolling balls (very inaccurate) Diffusion (inaccurate) Tuning fork (inaccurate) Pressure chamber cycle (inaccurate) Inertial regulator (inaccurate) Atomic oscillator (opaque, maintenance-intensive) Piezoelectric quartz oscillator (opaque, maintenance-intensive) Atomic decay (opaque, difficult to measure precisely)
External events that the clock can detect or by which it can be adjusted.
Many of these methods are accurate (some external cycles are very consistent over long periods), but unreliable (the clock could fail completely if it stops working).
Location
The Long Now Foundation has acquired the summit of Mount Washington near Ely, Nevada.[8] The mountain is located in the heart of the Great Basin National Park and, once completed, will serve as the permanent home for the full-size clock. It will be housed in several chambers (the slowest clock movements being visible first) within the white limestone cliffs, at an altitude of approximately 3,000 meters in the Snake Range.
The aridity, isolation, and low economic value of the site are intended to protect the clock from corrosion, vandalism, and development. Hillis chose this area in Nevada, among other reasons, because it is home to numerous dwarf pines (Pinus granulosus) that, according to the foundation, are almost 5,000 years old. The clock will be almost entirely underground and, once completed, will only be accessible on foot from the east.
Before the public clock is erected in Nevada, the foundation is building a full-size clock with a similar design inside a mountain in the Sierra Diablo near Van Horn, Texas. Test drilling for the underground construction at this site began in 2009. The land belongs to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is also funding the project. The lessons learned from building this first full-size 10,000-year clock will inform the final design of the clock in Nevada.
Inspiration and support
The project is supported by the Long Now Foundation, which also supports a number of other long-term projects, including the Rosetta Project (for the preservation of world languages) and the Long Bet Project.
Neal Stephenson's 2008 novel "Anathem" was partly inspired by his involvement in the project, to which he contributed three pages of sketches and notes.[9][10] The Long Now Foundation sells a soundtrack to the novel; the proceeds go towards the project.
The musician Brian Eno gave the Clock of the Long Now its name (and coined the term "Long Now") in an essay; he collaborated with Hillis on composing music for the bells for a future prototype.
