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Mac_Fife

Uru Live Moderator

Joined: 10 Nov 2006

Posts: 3154

Location: Scotland

I recently came across something that I found interesting. As a kind of challenge, let's see if anyone can identify it from the illustration below Wink

For now, I won't give any clues, such as where it comes from, and I've abstracted the image out from its original context so you can't check URLs for hints Twisted Evil

I'm pretty sure someone will get this, but if not I'll give a hint in a day or two.

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Lyrositor

Joined: 08 Aug 2010

Posts: 689

Location: Relto, Sea of Mist

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

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Nicoleleigh

Joined: 20 Feb 2011

Posts: 113

Location: Memphis, Tennessee

Maybe the internal workings of our Ki.

A little stumped.

AdamJohnso

Joined: 09 May 2006

Posts: 1253

Location: Milledgeville, GA

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.

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Simon

Joined: 06 Sep 2010

Posts: 111

Location: United States

Watcher's Pub?

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lunanne

Joined: 10 Oct 2009

Posts: 475

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

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belford

Joined: 08 Jun 2006

Posts: 1707

A cutaway diagram of a Rolodex?

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Trekluver

Joined: 17 Feb 2010

Posts: 1134

Location: US

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

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Robin

Joined: 10 May 2006

Posts: 236

Location: Clarkston, Michigan, USA

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

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

http://longnow.org/clock/

http://longnow.org/

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tommyap

Joined: 02 Apr 2011

Posts: 191

Location: the Netherlands

WOW , that was quick Laughing

Nicoleleigh

Joined: 20 Feb 2011

Posts: 113

Location: Memphis, Tennessee

Wow....

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

I lose.

Lord Chaos

Joined: 08 Sep 2006

Posts: 1110

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.

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Mac_Fife

Uru Live Moderator

Joined: 10 Nov 2006

Posts: 3154

Location: Scotland

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.

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Last edited by Mac_Fife on Mon Nov 14, 2011 6:53 am; edited 1 time in total

janaba1

Joined: 27 Jul 2006

Posts: 1360

Location: Berlin, Germany

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 ... Very Happy

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JWPlatt

Creative Kingdoms

Joined: 09 May 2006

Posts: 5760

Location: Everywhere, all at once

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.

Razz

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