The Long Now Foundation will be starting geologic testing this month for an underground space to house a 10,000 Year Clock. The Clock design, headed up by computer scientist Danny Hillis of The Long Now Foundation, has been in progress for over fourteen years. The Clock will be all mechanical, designed to keep ticking for at least 10,000 years, and will keep track of many calendric and astronomic events. The first eight-foot-tall prototype of the Clock resides in The Science Museum in London.
The idea behind the Clock is to be an inspiration for long-term thinking, to help make thinking long term automatic and common, instead of difficult and rare. It is hoped to be an artifact to connect its visitors to the future in the same way relics from ancient civilizations connect us to the past.
The Clock project in Texas, called Clock One, will be the first Clock built at monument scale by The Long Now Foundation, which also owns a potential site in eastern Nevada. The Clock will be almost entirely underground, and only accessed by foot traffic from the East once complete. The construction site and access is on property owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who is also funding the construction of the project. The Clock site overlooks the valley where his space company, Blue Origin, has its launch site.
A book by Stewart Brand, Clock of the Long Now, describes how the project began and philosophy behind it. Another good perspective can be found in an independent article written by Pulitzer prize-winning author Michael Chabon in "The Omega Glory". Further and more current details about The Long Now Foundation and their projects can be found at: http://www.longnow.org.
In 01999 The Long Now Foundation purchased desert mountain land adjoining the Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada as a potential Clock site.
"The idea of the Clock is to encourage long-term thinking, which is in short supply these days", said Stewart Brand, president of the foundation. The monumental scale clock would be built inside spectacular white limestone cliffs at 10,000 feet elevation on the west side of the Snake mountain range. Most of the range is within the Great Basin National Park, which is America's newest national park, established in 01986.
The announcement of the land purchase was made at Baker, the gateway town of the national park, and in nearby Ely at a gathering of White Pine County officials sponsored by Ely's Economic Diversification Council and. The property was described as 180.3 acres, made up of eleven patented mining claims dating back to 01916.
Most of the two-mile-long swath of land is covered by a forest of ancient bristlecone pine trees. Bristlecones are considered the world's oldest living thing. One tree in the Snake Range was determined to be over 4,900 years old.
The purchase of the property from National Treasure Mines Inc. was made possible by donations from three high-tech pioneers---the Mitchel Kapor Foundation (Kapor founded Lotus), the Jay Walker family (Walker founded Priceline.com), and Bill Joy (one of the founders of Sun Microsystems).
The Millennium Clock is being designed and built by Danny Hillis, designer of some of the world's fastest computers. Entirely mechanical rather than electronic, the Hillis clock design utilizes a new form of digital calculation and synchronizes with the noon sun to achieve reliable accuracy over very long periods of time.
As Hillis first described the Clock in 01993, "It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium." A working prototype of the Clock, eight feet high, is now operational and began to tick on New Year's Eve 01999.
The Clock project is the core of an array of activities being undertaken by The Long Now Foundation to "foster long-term responsibility"---including a 10,000-year Library. A book by Brand, THE CLOCK OF THE LONG NOW (Basic Books, 01999), describes the projects and the philosophy behind them.
"This is a timeless landscape," said Brand, describing the high desert terrain around the potential Clock site, "and the remarkable people here reflect that. That's the attraction. We have to be careful to protect that, just as Great Basin National Park does."
A number of individuals in White Pine County helped The Long Now Foundation find a promising mountain for the Clock. Realtor Dave Tilford engineered the land purchase. Karen Rajala, chair of the Economic Diversification Council, organized the meeting in Ely where the land purchase was made public.
The Long Now Foundation
Fostering Long-term Responsibility
est. 01996.
