A Cam for the Clock of the Long Now The Clock of the Long Now is
a proposed cultural monument, designed to keep local, absolute and
astronomical time over a span of 10,000 years.
The Prague Astronomical Clock, or Prague Orloj, is a medieval astronomical clock located in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest one still working.
The legend is that the artist who created the amazing clock was so successful in his job, that in order to prevent him from building another one that’ll compete with this wonder, the patrons of Prague blinded him! As an act of vengeance, the clockmaker climbed on the tower and stopped the clock for 50 years.
October 14, 2020 · We are excited to announce the speakers for Long Now Member Ignite Talks 02020! Welcome our Members and speakers. Catherine Chalmers: Collaborating with Insects; Allison Cooper: Activism as Futurism: Imagining Better Worlds; Danese Cooper: Change Agents (and How to Become One); Jason Crawford: Instant stone (just add water!) Stewart Dickson: Plastic Mathematics in the Clock; Michael Garfield: Deepfakes & The Archaic Revival; Quentin Hardy: The Great Dead End; Asmara Marek: The Future of Storytelling; Louis Metzger: Our future drugs will come from the oceans; Can we save them in time?;;Marc Pomerleau: Leways: The Story of a Chinatown Pool Hall; Patricia Ravasio: Lost Visions of the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th Century; Madeline Sunley: Art and Time: Axial Precession, archaeoastronomy, and marking a desert nuclear waste site for the next ten millennia; Scott Thrift: A Longer Now
October 14, 2020 · We are excited to announce the speakers for Long Now Member Ignite Talks 02020! Welcome our Members and speakers. Catherine Chalmers: Collaborating with Insects; Allison Cooper: Activism as Futurism: Imagining Better Worlds; Danese Cooper: Change Agents (and How to Become One); Jason Crawford: Instant stone (just add water!) Stewart Dickson: Plastic Mathematics in the Clock; Michael Garfield: Deepfakes & The Archaic Revival; Quentin Hardy: The Great Dead End; Asmara Marek: The Future of Storytelling; Louis Metzger: Our future drugs will come from the oceans; Can we save them in time?;;Marc Pomerleau: Leways: The Story of a Chinatown Pool Hall; Patricia Ravasio: Lost Visions of the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th Century; Madeline Sunley: Art and Time: Axial Precession, archaeoastronomy, and marking a desert nuclear waste site for the next ten millennia; Scott Thrift: A Longer Now
Jeff Bezos & co to build the first Clock of the Long Now #5yrsago
Jeff Bezos has financed the construction of the first Clock of the Long Now. Created by Danny Hillis for the Long Now Foundation, the Clock is a mechanical timepiece that is intended to run for 10,000 years, and has been designed so that it can be serviced and maintained over that period even if civilization collapses and knowledge of its origin and purpose are lost. The first Clock will be built inside a mountain in west Texas.
The Equation of Time is a function which can convert from local solar time to absolute time. It accounts for the elliptical eccentricities in the orbit of the Earth about the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's axis, which result in variations in the Sun's apparent rate of travel along the Ecliptic -- the position of the Sun in the sky at absolute noon, over the span of a year.
This is the Equation of Time plotted over the year 2000. The local maxima and minima are aspects of the graph which shift with the Precession of the Equinoxes over a period of about 26,000 years.
In the year 1246, when the Earth-Sun Perigee coincided with the Winter Solstice, the curve was exactly symmetrical about the Winter Solstice. This will not happen again until approximately the Gregorian year 27246.
This is the Equation of Time, computed in Mathematica, wrapped onto a cylinder. The rotational range is one year. The axial range is Gregorian Year 1500 to 12500.
The is the cylindrical Mathematica plot of the Equation of Time converted into a CAD object for output via a 3-D Rapid Prototyping printer. Stewart Dickson did this CAD work.
The CAD output has been cast into a mechanical cam, which will re-synchronize the Clock at local solar noon via a thermal trigger.
The time-keeping element of the Clock is a mechanical computer -- the World's Slowest Computer -- designed by W. Daniel Hillis and the Long Now Foundation.
For more information, see:
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility by Stewart Brand, Basic Books, New York, 1999
Calendrical Calculations By Nachum Dershowitz and Edward M. Reingold. Cambridge University Press, 1997.