Myst Online: URU Live Forums

Re: A little teaser...

Loshem — Mon Nov 14, 2011 2:57 pm

Author: Loshem

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 2:57 pm

Pretty sure the Greeks already tried this in Antikythera. Somebody should be sure and tell them not to put it on a ship

Re: A little teaser...

JWPlatt — Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:54 pm

Author: JWPlatt

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:54 pm

Imagine 9990 years hence what sort of holo-movies and panic this clock is going to induce about the end of the world. Surely it was built by our civilization as a warning against some cosmic cataclysm that we somehow divined but that future generations had forgotten.

Re: A little teaser...

janaba1 — Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:55 am

Author: janaba1

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:55 am

This is a very nice and astounding project and challenge ... Why nice? ... because it's somehow like
a giant mechanical toy for technicians, architects and engineers to experiment and to improve and
extend their high degree of special expertise etc. and materialize that in co-creation with like-minded
visionaries and high-level peers to create something extraordinary and entirely superhuman with
interesting anticipatory, far-sighted ideals and visions ... and, of course, with impressive solutions as
of the mechanics from the Solar Synchronizer, the Timing System/Display to the Main Power Sytem
as well as the maintenance, the sustainability and to keep it going for such a long span of time ...

Thanks, dearest Mac_Fife, I think I've read about it already before, but now I really took it in ...

Re: A little teaser...

Mac_Fife — Mon Nov 14, 2011 6:52 am

Author: Mac_Fife

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 6:52 am

Yeah, I knew there'd be someone here who reads the same kind of material as me! Trekluver was first to identify the project, but Robin most accurately described the item in the illustration - The chime generator from the 10,000 year clock, currently being built near Van Horn in Texas.

I'll add another link to the ones Robin gave: http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/engineering-the-10-000year-clock

A quick summary of those articles: This is a project intended to make people start to think about the long term future and is being funded by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who has also provided the land for it. It requires no electricity to operate and the mechanism for the time keeping part is partially wound by the sun and temperature changes from day to night but the chimes need to be wound by visitors. The clock "display" also needs to be wound by visitors for it to update to the current date/time. The chime generator is described as "the world's slowest digital computer."

The idea of a massive, purely mechanical clock, built inside a rock shaft at the end of 150 metres of tunnel and synchronized by the sun sounded positively D'ni-ish to me. Echoes of the Great Shaft and the Great Zero together, and like AdamJohnso, I saw similarities to the GZ mechanism in that chime generator drawing.

Re: A little teaser...

Lord Chaos — Mon Nov 14, 2011 2:09 am

Author: Lord Chaos

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 2:09 am

I think it looks like the mechanism for moving the heads across a hard disk... made by Rube Goldberg after he'd spent a couple of weeks palling around with some steampunk buddies at IBM.

Re: A little teaser...

Nicoleleigh — Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:23 am

Author: Nicoleleigh

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:23 am

Wow....

I thought it was going to be a part of URU or one of the Myst Games.

I lose.

Re: A little teaser...

tommyap — Mon Nov 14, 2011 12:36 am

Author: tommyap

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 12:36 am

WOW , that was quick

Re: A little teaser...

Robin — Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:28 pm

Author: Robin

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:28 pm

That's the chime generator for the 10,000 year clock.

http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html

http://longnow.org/clock/

http://longnow.org/

Re: A little teaser...

Trekluver — Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:23 pm

Author: Trekluver

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:23 pm

An artist's depiction of a 10,000 year clock prototype.

Re: A little teaser...

belford — Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:17 pm

Author: belford

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:17 pm

A cutaway diagram of a Rolodex?

Re: A little teaser...

lunanne — Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:32 pm

Author: lunanne

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:32 pm

The clock mechanism in the locked room of the Watcher's pub?

Re: A little teaser...

Simon — Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:29 pm

Author: Simon

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:29 pm

Watcher's Pub?

Re: A little teaser...

AdamJohnso — Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:22 pm

Author: AdamJohnso

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:22 pm

Looks like some kind of combination of the Great Zero protractor and the Ahnoying sphere mechanism... Though it obviously looks more like the former than the latter. Though oddly it also reminds me of the Astrolabe from that "Ubisoft Wants Your $$$" game The Forgotten Sands.

Re: A little teaser...

Nicoleleigh — Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:12 pm

Author: Nicoleleigh

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:12 pm

Maybe the internal workings of our Ki.

A little stumped.

Re: A little teaser...

Lyrositor — Sun Nov 13, 2011 7:53 pm

Author: Lyrositor

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 7:53 pm

I have no idea. I'm leaning either towards a kind of convoluted clock, or a weapon. Or a telescope of some kind.