Technology: The 10,000 Year Clock

"We are as gods and we might as well get good at it"
Stewart Brand, 1968, from the Whole Earth Catalog

Our society has often had the problem of being short sighted. And we've had an even bigger problem with planning ahead. Just look at the fiasco that was the Y2K crisis where computers built to the turn of the century only used two digits to denote years, IE: 12/31/99. This could have been a non-issue if the designers of computers had the forethought to realize that a new century would come about at some point or another, and just designed it right from the beginning. Did they think, "Oh, fuck it. Let it be someone else's problem"? Now, of course the disaster that was going to land on our head's on 01/01/00 never happened. But it could have, and it could have been the most epic of fails.

One man, however, decided that it’s important to look forward. Computer scientist, designer, and inventor Danny Hillis came up with an idea in 1989 to design a clock that would keep time for the next 10,000 years. No one can predict what the world will be like 10,000 years from now. In fact, there’s a good chance our civilization could be extinct by then (thanks, Mayans). However, according to the Long Now Foundation, started by Hillis in 1996 to support the project, most civilizations last about 10,000 years.

On left, a technical drawing of the Clock.
On right, a much smaller prototype version of what the Clock will actually be.

Designed to be a symbol, an icon for long-term thinking, the 10,000 Year Clock is of monumental scale - so mind bogglingly huge, that they had to build it inside a mountain in West Texas. Hillis has been thinking about and working on the Clock for more than 22 years. He wanted to build a Clock that ticks once a year, where the century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. The vision was, and still is, to build a Clock that will keep time for the next 10,000 years. Now that's a commitment!

A project like this obviously isn’t cheap, but Hillis and team have some good support, specifically from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos who has given $42 million to the project. Bezos didn’t just give the project a boatload of money; he’s also giving it a mountain to build in. According to a website Bezos recently launched called 10000yearclock.net, Bezos has been helping Hillis with the project for the past six years.

Hillis will be building the clock on Bezos’ land in western Texas. It’s the first of what the Long Now Foundation hopes to be many millennial clocks that will be built around the world. A second site has already been purchased in Nevada for the second clock.

Does not care for clocks.

The clock actually needs two to three people to wind it. However, it also runs off of solar power, so it can technically never have a visitor and still tick away. It can also run for 100 years without solar power. So, granted we lose our sun, the clock could work a century without it before it needs humans to wind it up.  But by then, the Earth will likely be run by Morloks, and I don't think they'll give a rat's ass about a clock.

To conserve energy, the clock doesn’t show the time unless someone prompts it. Otherwise, the visitor will see the time of the last visitor. This is pretty neat, in a way, since you can see the last time a person had visited the clock, which could be days or decades.



The clock uses 20 huge horizontal gears called Geneva wheels, which are 8 feet in diameter and weigh 1,000 pounds each. This mechanical computer calculates the over 3.5 million different melodies that the chimes will ring. The father of ambient music, Brian Eno, composed the never-repeating melody generator that rings the clock’s chimes, making each visit to the clock 100-percent unique. There are 10 huge chimes that are optimized for the acoustics of the shaft space.  Each user’s experience is unique and no two users will ever create the same sound, much like how the clock’s chimes will work.

Carved into the mountain are five room-sized anniversary chambers: 1 year, 10 year, 100 year, 1,000 year, and 10,000 year anniversaries. The one year anniversary chamber is a special orrery. In addition to the planets and the Earth's moon, it includes all of the interplanetary probes launched during the 20th century, humankind's first century in space. Among others, you'll see the Grand Tour: Voyager 2's swing by of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The Clock will activate and run the orrery once a year on a pre-determined date at solar noon.

They aren't planning to build the animations for the 100, 1,000, and 10,000 year anniversary chambers, but they will instead leave those to future generations. The team will be providing a mechanical interface into those chambers that provides those future builders with power and the correct Clock triggering events. They do, however, intend to build the animation for the 10 year anniversary chamber, but haven't yet decided what it will be.

Visiting the Clock will take a commitment. The nearest airport is several hours away by car, and the foot trail to the Clock is rugged, rising almost 2,000 feet above the valley floor. If you are interested in visiting the Clock when it is complete (in quite a few years), you can subscribe to Clock Interest by emailing a blank message to clockinterest@10000yearclock.net. I know I plan on making the trek. I hope it'll be worth the wait.