Jeff Bezos Making the Clock That Doesn’t Die (for 10,000 Years)

Some billionaires choose to patronize things like universities or the arts or the less fortunate. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is patronizing a clock.

At least it’s a damn cool clock.

Bezos is funding the “Clock of the Long Now,” which will keep time for the next 10,000 years. Yes, 10,000 years! It’s going to be located inside a mountain in Texas, and right now they’re building it. Every day for 10,000 years, the clock will generate a different sequence of chimes. Then it’ll tick once a year. Every thousand years, there’s a cuckoo. Awesome!

In this day and age, the Bezos name attached to project will be enough to garner interest in and of itself, but the clock will work and be understandable thousands of years from now, when the concept of someone who made his fortune with a company that started off by selling “books” that people bought on “desktop computers” will be about as relatable as the Neolithic period is now. They’re hoping to transcend generations, centuries and even millenia with this thing. Honestly, we have no idea how they’re doing that.

We also didn’t invent Amazon.

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