Jeff Bezos invests $42 million to build clock that will last 10,000 years, tick once a year: Report 

Jeff Bezos was apparently inspired by the clock designer Danny Hillis's vision and decided to invest in the project. (Right) The winding platform of the clock. (Image credit: AFP, Long Now Foundation)

Jeff Bezos has invested $42 million to build a clock that would run for 10,000 years. The clock--being constructed inside a mountain in Texas, US--would tick only once a year, bong once a century, and cuckoo once a millennium, Fox News reported. The Amazon founder and billionaire apparently wants it to be a symbol of long-term thinking and a reminder of our responsibility to the future.

Designed by computer scientist and inventor Danny Hillis, the clock is intended to be a wonder of engineering and a work of art. It will use the Earth’s thermal cycles to power itself and will be 500 feet tall, spanning the entire height of the mountain, Fox News reported. It is currently being built by the Long Now Foundation and is called "The Clock of the Long Now".

The foundation said the "monument scale mechanical clock" is designed to keep accurate time for the next ten millennia.

"The Clock is hundreds of feet tall, engineered to require minimal maintenance, and powered by mechanical energy harvested from sunlight as well as the people that visit it," it stated on its website.

The clock has a chime generator that will create over 3.5 million unique bell chime sequences--— one for every day the Clock is visited for the next 10,000 years.

As per the Fox News report, Jeff Bezos was inspired by the vision of Danny Hillis, and being a long-term thinker who believes that humanity has a bright future, he decided to invest in the clock as a way to foster long-term thinking and responsibility.

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