A Clock That Runs for 10,000 Years

Justin Blanton writes "Discover magazine is running an article about a clock designed to run accurately for 10,000 years. It's essentially a "future-proof" clock that blurs the line between art and functionality through advanced engineering. From the article: 'Everything about this clock is deeply unusual. For example, while nearly every mechanical clock made in the last millennium consists of a series of propelled gears, this one uses a stack of mechanical binary computers capable of singling out one moment in 3.65 million days. Like other clocks, this one can track seconds, hours, days, and years. Unlike any other clock, this one is being constructed to keep track of leap centuries, the orbits of the six innermost planets in our solar system, even the ultraslow wobbles of Earth's axis.'"

Comments

I want to have one!

[Vario]

The clock looks like ThinkGeek could sell quite a lot of them, it may be a little on the expensive side. A lot of high-tech mechanic combined with a polished look so that any other clock looks childish.

The article is rather slow to get already so use mirrodot instead: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/608e5b4931282247b 42f18bb66f3c291/index.html

Interesting Stuff

[Ezmate]

I stumbled across this project 5 years ago & was immediately in love. The scope of the project is amazing, the engineering that went into some of the pieces is incredible, and the final product (the first prototype) was gorgeous. I read everything I could about it & even had it as my wallpaper for a while. If you like mechanical devices, take some time to look at this project - it's well worth it!

Currently, you can find the project's web page at http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/

The mechanical computer, the solar synchronizer, and the power mechanism are all very cool pieces of engineering. However, the most fascinating part of the entire clock is the "Equation of Time Cam". A bit more information about the cam follows.

The proposed clock not only keeps accurate solar time (it resets itself every day at noon via the solar synchronizer), it also keeps accurate "clock time". How it does this is pretty amazing:

In general, when the sun reaches its highest point ("solar noon"), you can look at your watch & find that it's not really noon. On any given day, the variation between "solar noon" & "clock noon" is +/- 15 minutes. Of course, this variation chanages through out the year, following a well defined curve known as the "equation of time" (http://www.sundials.co.uk/equation.htm) (it looks like a 5th order polynomial equation).

So, when the mechanical clock resets itself at "solar noon", it's needs to account for this variation to determine "clock noon". One way to do this is to make a disc that is not perfectly round; it has a wider diameter at portions & a narrower diameter at other parts (something like a cross between a circle & an ameoba). This "disc" makes one revolution per year, and the variations in its diameter represent the difference between "solar noon" & "clock noon". So, at "solar noon", the clock resets itself & uses a feeler gauge on the disc to figure out how much variation to add or subtract to display "clock noon". So, assuming you have a sunny day every once & a while, you have a clock that will always have accurate clock time. Ingenious!

There's a problem, though: each year, the equation of time changes slightly. So, in order to keep accurate clock time for 10,000 years, you need 10,000 of these discs, each representing the distinct equation of time for each year. The Long Now foundation solves this problem by making an "Equation of Time Cam" - a continous stack of these cylinders. In my mind it is a thing of beauty - engineering at its best - well thought out and so simple. Here's a picture of the cam - it's the cylinder that looks like it melted a bit:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/prototype1/i mages/general-EqOfTimeDtl1_00Lo.jpg

The Long Now's explanation can be found here (complete with Cad drawings!):

http://emsh.calarts.edu/~mathart/Clock_Cam.html

I hope everyone enjoys this project as much as I have - Have fun!