HOME PAGE
|
Sunday, February 20, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
10,000-year clock project encourages slower pace
Timepiece to be built into mountain face
By Warren Bates
Review-Journal
BAKER -- If life weren't moving slowly enough in Baker, population 80, a worldwide consortium of high-tech types and artists want it to go a little slower.
The Long Now Foundation, based in San Francisco, has purchased 80 acres of land on Mount Washington, about 12 miles from Baker. There, it intends to install a 10,000-year clock that will tick once a year, bong every century and whose cuckoo -- if one is included -- will come out every millennium.
The group's founders, according to administrative assistant Camille Davila, believe "the whole civilization has been going into a shortened attention span."
The idea is to encourage longer-term responsibility, said president Stewart Brand, who also is president of the Whole Earth Catalog.
Plans are to build the 8-foot-high timepiece into the face of white limestone cliffs at the 10,000-foot elevation on the west side of the Snake Mountain range. The property, purchased for $140,000 last year, previously belonged to a mining company whose claims dated back to 1916.
Most of the two-mile-long stretch of land just outside Great Basin National Park is covered by a forest of bristlecone pines, among the world's oldest living things. Davila said New Mexico and Northern California were considered as potential sites, but the idea of a remote spot coupled with the fact some of the trees have survived nearly 5,000 years won the day for the Snake Range.
The clock is being designed by Danny Hillis, touted by the foundation as having built some of the world's fastest computers. Details on its progress can be found on the foundation's Web site (www.longnow.org). Entirely mechanical rather than electronic, the group says the clock "utilizes a new form of digital calculation and synchronizes with the noon sun to achieve accuracy over very long periods of time."
A working prototype was finished in time for the turn of the millennium. It bonged twice.
It is hoped that people will be able to walk through the area where the clock will stand, providing "a meditative experience," Davila said.
The thing about 10,000-year clocks, though, is there is no rush to put them in. Davila speculated project completion is "10, maybe 20 years" down the road. The foundation is also working on a second similar clock for an urban area in a more controlled environment.
She acknowledged the project is "going to be really expensive. Really, really, really expensive."
E-mail this story to a friend:
Give us your FEEDBACK on this or any story.
BEST OF LAS VEGAS
Fill out our Online Readers' Poll
|
Printable version of this story
Pictured is a prototype of a Millennium Clock, one of two in the world that will be built. The clock, which will run for 10,000 years and tick once a year, will be placed into the side of a mountain near Baker by the Long Now Foundation, which bought the land.
Photo courtesy of Long Now Foundation
|
