10,000 Year Clock : The Long Now

W. Daniel Hillis of Applied Minds, Inc. is designing a perfectly synchronized 10,000 year clock / sculpture / statement with the Long Now Foundation. 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. . . 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. . .”The ultimate design criterion is that people have to care about it,” says Hillis. “If they don’t, it won’t last.”

via Discover