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

Great, does it have an alarm?

[MrDelSarto]

With all this fantastic clock technology, where can I get an alarm clock that has technology that wasn't cutting edge in 1969?

I'd like

• Ability to set different alarms for Monday-Friday and Sat-Sun
• Multiple alarms, so I can get up early and my parter can sleep in until the second alarm for her goes off
• Digital tuning (AM/FM) and volume control
• Ability to match a station/volume to a function: i.e. go to sleep with quiet AM radio and wake up to loud FM radio

Clock radios haven't changed at all since I first got one when I was about 5! Someone out there must be able to package up a glorified palm pilot with some big buttons and red led's and make a killing. These days you could put 802.11 in it and get weather/traffic reports on a led ticker ... I'm sure there is a market!

Re:The clock requires maintenance

[bpowell423]

I read the article before it was slashdotted. He intends to build the final version of this clock in a limestone cave, half-way up the side of a 10,000 foot cliff. The entrance will look natural enough, especially after several thousand years, but as you go deeper into the cave, you begin to see the workings of the clock. First, the slowest moving things like the zodiac, then years, months, etc, getting to faster moving pieces as you go deeper into the cave. All the way back, you finally get to where the heart of the clock is ticking. This guy is definitely trying to create a "wonder of the world" and it's not hard to imagine an "Indiana Jones" type of event where some future archaeologist rediscovers this thing. The fact that the display freezes until someone else winds it (he mentioned stepping on a plate to wind the display), is genious. Imagine you're this explorer, sweeping away cobwebs to get a closer look at the machine. The display reads sometime in the 23rd century. As you step closer, you step on a plate in the floor that sinks under your weight. The display begins to move and when things settle down, the current date, maybe in the 57th century, is displayed.