Clock of the Long Now

The Clock of the Long Now, also called the 10,000-year clock, is a proposed mechanical clock designed to keep time for 10,000 years. The project to build it is part of the Long Now Foundation.  I was involved with this initiative in providing them with Pro/ENGINEER software to build the mechanism.

The project was conceived by Danny Hillis in 1986 and 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, to ring in the “third millennium“. That prototype, approximately two meters tall, is currently on display at the Science Museum in London.

As of December 2007, two more recent prototypes are on display at The Long Now Museum & Store at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

The Long Now Foundation has purchased a mountaintop near Ely, Nevada, surrounded by the Great Basin National Park, for the permanent storage of the full sized clock, once it is constructed. It will be housed in a series of rooms (the slowest mechanisms visible first) in the white limestone cliffs, approximately 10,000 feet up the Snake Range. The site’s dryness, remoteness, and lack of economic value should protect the clock from corrosion and development. Hillis chose this part of Nevada because it is home to a number of dwarf bristlecone pines, which the Foundation notes are nearly 5,000 years old.