Post by Kaber on Jan 19, 2005 19:39:24 GMT -5
The 10,000-Year Clock-or Clock of the Long Now(the name was coined by Roxy Music founder Brian Eno) –is envisioned as a multistoried mechanical structure that will be housed in a carved-out mountain cave in eastern Nevada, near the town of Ely, the Great Basin National Park and the Utah border.
It’s among several projects being developed by the Long Now Foundation, a consortium of future thinkers that seeks to foster long-term thinking. The team is preparing three prototypes before attempting the final monumental clock.
The first prototype is housed in the Science Museum in London; the second, in progress in a machine shop in San Raphael, Calif…..will eventually be housed in a museum when its completed by early 2005.
…………..The clock materials are low-tech, designed to last and be fixed mechanically – as opposed to electronically – over time, so that the timepiece is never beholden to any obsolete technology.
Nevertheless, Long Now Foundation members have secured seven patents for a novel mechanisms. One includes a binary mechanical adding machine that stores ones and zeros in lever positions giving the clock digital accuracy, but with mechanics. Another involves sun-promted time corrections. The clock will be aligned with the sun in such a way that the sun’s rays fall on a piece of metal in the clock at noon each day. The heat will cause the metal to expand, setting off a series of mechanical events that trigger the clock to reset itself at noon.
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