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Amazon boss Jeff Bezos is building a £30million clock inside a mountain
The super-rich Amazon founder has begun construction of a 500-foot-tall 'Clock of the Long Now' that seems designed solely to confuse our distant descendants
AMAZON founder Jeff Bezos has started building a £30 million clock inside a hollowed-out mountain.
The uber-rich tech CEO says the ridiculous venture is a "symbol for long-term thinking", and shared a video of the clock's construction on Twitter.
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The idea for the clock was developed by inventor Danny Hillis back in 1995, but its taken years (and lots of Jeff Bezos dollars) to get the project off the ground.
The gargantuan timepiece is intended to last for at least 10,000 years, and should accurately keep time over that entire duration.
Bezos' team has spent the last few years building parts for the clock and hollowing out a remote mountain in Texas to contain the parts.
But it's only now that the clock team have been able to begin installation of the wacky creation.
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In a post to Twitter, Bezos said: "Installation has begun. 500 foot tall, all mechanical, powered by day/night thermal cycles, synchronised at solar noon, a symbol for long-term thinking.
He added: "The 10,000 year clock is coming together thx to the genius of Danny Hillis, Zander Rose, and the whole clock team."
The clock's chime generator will create a unique bell-ringing sequence every 24 hours.
There will also be five "anniversary chambers" that contain a different mechanical animation.
Anathem – the book that inspired the Bezos clock
If a 10,000-year clock sounds like the stuff of sci-fi fantasy, that's because it is...
- Sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson helped sketch out his idea of a "Millennium Clock" back in 1999
- He worked on the project with Danny Hillis, the mind behind the Bezos clock
- Hillis is now helping to build a 10,000-year clock with funding from Amazon boss Jeff Bezos
- But the original designs were inspired by Stephenson
- Around 2004, Stephenson recalled his work on the clock, and pieced together an idea for a novel
- In 2008, he released a near-1,000-page book called Anathem
- The book includes an intellectual sub-society called the Avout, who are segregated into 1-, 10-, 100-, and 1,000-year orders
- These intellectuals are isolated from society, but release information to the world during festivals that happen at intervals determined by their year order number
- For instance, a 100-year order member would only divulge their learnings to society every 100 years
The one-year chamber will feature a model of our solar system, followed by a 10-year, 100-year, 1,000-year, and 10,000-year animations that have yet to be decided.
Incredibly, a cuckoo is also designed to pop out of a hole every 1,000 years. Why? Just for fun, it seems.
Back in 2011, Bezos is quoted as saying: "In the year 4,000, you'll go see this clock and you'll wonder 'Why on Earth did they build this?'"
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The public will be able to visit the clock once it's completed, but the trip won't be easy.
On the clock's website, Bezos writes: "The nearest airport is several hours away by car, and the foot trail to the clock is rugged, rising almost 2,000 feet above the valley floor."
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