Centripetal Notion

The Long Now Foundation unveiled its Orrery clock last night to the public in Marin County, California.

The Orrery is a ten foot tall planet tracking display. The lower half is a mechanical binary calculation engine. Each layer is calculating the orbit if one of the six human eye visible planets (Mercury through Saturn) to 28 bits of accuracy. The Orrery is primarily made of monel (a nickel copper alloy), and stainless steel. The planet spheres are ground from natural stones that resemble each planet they represent.

longnow.org

LINK [project website]
IMAGES (via Jake Appelbaum> Boing Boing)
LINK [Discover article]
LINK [about The Long Now Foundation]

The Orrery is based off the same mechanical calculation engine (above/below) that powers the 10,000 year clock, the original prototype of The Long Now Foundation.

The 10,000 year clock is a “monument scale, multi-millennial, all mechanical clock [built] as an icon to long term thinking”. It ticks once a year, its hand counts the centuries, and it chimes every millennium.

LINK [10,000 clock story]
LINK [project website w/ images]