Constructing A 10,000 Year Clock in 02011
The Nevadan landscape where the 10,000 Year Clock will be built. Source: http://wired.com
“I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years.” – Danny Hillis, Computer Scientist & Futurist
Some people struggle to think a day ahead, others can’t plan for next year, and few can visualize a future beyond that of their own children or grandchildren. So when asked to ponder life 10,000 years in the future, most people might respond with a blank stare, or withering look. That is unless you are a futurists. Like the members of the Long Now Foundation.
Inventor Danny Hillis first proposed the 10,000-year clock in WIRED in 1995, and has spent more than 15 years designing it. Source: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Computer Scientist Danny Hillis first came up with an idea for a gargantuan, multi-millenial, all mechanical clock over 20 years ago. He sent the idea in an email to his friends, proclaiming that it would be an iconic tribute to the long-term thinking approach which underpins the Long Now Foundation. Naturally most of them thought he was joking. In a personal short essay published in 1995 in Wired Magazine “Scenarios” issue Hillis described the seemingly endless engineering and logistics questions that were married to such a feat. How to build it? How to run it accurately? How to power it? How to display the time? But perhaps the biggest question of all lies in the why. Why do it in the first place?
Hillis explained that such a clock will be a tool to expand our minds. It will feed our myth-loving and story-telling natures while also focusing the entire debate around long-term thinking. When confronting the issue of why he dreamed of building the clock, Hillis said:
“I cannot imagine the future, but I care about it. I know I am a part of a story that starts long before I can remember and continues long beyond when anyone will remember me. I sense that I am alive at a time of important change, and I feel a responsibility to make sure that the change comes out well. I plant my acorns knowing that I will never live to harvest the oaks.
I have hope for the future.”
The year after, writer Stewart Brand rallied a group of friends and incorporated a non-profit dedicated to long-term thinking and social responsibility. They were to be the founding members of The Long Now Foundation. Futurist member Peter Schwartz suggested a 10,000 year time-frame; this was how long humanity had enjoyed a stable climate and technological progression. It is not the sort of billion year time frame that astrologists work with, nor the million year time frame that geologists work with. It was a human time frame that echoes the Anthroposene moment.
The miniature Prototype. Source: http://longnow.org/clock/prototype1
And it was the following year in 1997, or rather 01997 (The Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years) that they incorporated the 10,000 Year Clock idea into their plans and Hillis presented his prototype of a binary mechanical computer. The first prototype, now viewable at the Making of the Modern World exhibit in London’s Science Museum, was completed on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium. Then in 2005 a planet tracking display known as an orrery was completed.
Now, after lessons learned by these first efforts and thanks to a sizable $42 million contribution from billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, construction of a monolithic modern wonder is now underway in Texas. The Long Now Foundation acquired over 240 acres of desert mountain land adjoining the Great Basin National Park in Nevada. When built (there is no completion date, as it is an ongoing program), the clock, built underground into the mountain, will stand 200-feet tall and will comprise of an internal central gear mechanism consisting of 8-foot 700 pound stainless steel gear wheel and 6-foot, 300 pound steel pendulum, around which wraps a limestone-carved spiral staircase that leads upwards to the 8-foot wide face of the clock.
The pendulum causes the clock to tick every ten seconds and this directs energy from stone weights to the titanium escapement that is located in a quartz protective box – dust is a right bitch over 10,000 years!
The chime system utilises 20 Geneva drives which utilise the energy of the constantly rotary drive wheel and stepwise rotary motion of the second wheel which in turn utilise special ceramic bearings which avoid the need for lubrication. Whew! And to top that off, across the deci-millenial period a staggering 3.65 million possible chimes will sound, all of which need to have a unique chime for each day. For this musician Brian Eno has stepped in to write the chimes.
An example of the chime Mechanism. Source http://singularityhub.com
The face displays the sun and moon positions, shows a star field of the night sky and has two rings, a year ring and a century ring at the circumference of the face, which display the year in Long Now’s five-digit format. Horizon lines and a rete convey what portion of the star field is actually visible at the moment. So the main face doesn’t actually tell you the time, rather a separate face does that, which visitors have to wind. A visitor will wind the face to show the present time and will be able to see how long it has been since the last visit was made. It is a thrilling notion to conceive of the clock being wound once again in some distant millenia, after a multi-century hiatus.
A scale miniature of the final clock. Source: http://tecca.com
In his essay Hillis tells the story of a 14th century carpenter who oversaw the building of Oxford University’s New College. The inspiration behind the clock. He describes how alongside completing the building, the carpenter also planted oak trees so that when, over five centuries later, the hall’s roof beams finally needed replacing, the same building materials would be available. This is is the sort of forward thinking that boggles my mind.
There are many more examples through human history; Shinto practitioners who deconstruct and reconstruct their temple every generation for a millenia, the Egyptian Pyramids designed to protect the tombs of the Pharoahs into infinity. And today perhaps the most prominent example for 10,000 year planning is nuclear waste. There are also 1000 year seed vaults and mechanisms designed to protect against 1000 year natural catastrophes. But on the whole such thinking is absent from so many of our societies’ decision making processes. Hillis asks whether today’s builders also planted trees with the next 500 years in mind. In today’s society where wasteful consumption and unsustainable growth define our global footprint, perhaps such a staggering monument to our prolonged survival is just what we need.
Look to Long Now Foundation for even more information on the clock’s principles and you can view the designs in this detailed free 325-page pdf. And here project manager Alexander Rose gives an excellent one-hour SETI Talk on the Construction process.
10,000 years is an incredible length of time. Sometimes, I contemplate on the fact that the periods in history we often think of as eras in the remote past -- the Middle Ages, the Roman Empire, etc.-- all happened not really so long ago. So it does make one wonder how much the world will have changed 10 millenia from today. Hopefully, the clock will still be running!
The clock will still be running - if it is left to "its own devices" and assuming it hasn't been destroyed by us or some form of meteor... my bigger concern is will human civilisatioon still be running!
I watched the video and read the post - just fascinating on so many levels. The ideation aspect of my thinking has been challenged by the problems that need to be considered for a 10,000 year device. Building something purposeful, regular, and yet able to adjust to inevitable change is difficult indeed. Language, for instance, has had a long history because it can keep changing while fulfilling a constant need. I think the clock is much more vulnerable than that and is, therefore, a more daunting challenge. Thanks for the great post.
The depth of investigation going into the entire build and planning process is just phenomenal. I mean considerations of planting misleading treasure by the clock to trick future plunderers - just fascinating. The 10,000 year clock is more than a drive to assert collective humanity's ego, or even the ego of the builders themselves. Perhaps in 2 centuries or 3 millenias time that's how it will be interpreted - but I am touched to see it comes from a place which is so dearly sensitive to our own fragility. It's vulnerability is so powerfully human. My mind can't help but be drawn to Douglas Adams' Deep Thought: the computer that was created by the pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent race of beings who wait 7 and a half million years for the answer to the meaning of life.
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