This article is for quizzes on Wednesday July 27th...
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.
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 two-meter prototype is on display at the Science Museum in London.
The manufacture and site construction of the first full-scale prototype clock is being funded by Jeff Bezos, who has donated $42 million, and is located on land he owns in Texas. The final clock will be built near Ely, Nevada.
The clock is one of several projects through which the foundation intends to promote long-term thinking. 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."
