> Billed as "the world's slowest computer". And a nice piece of 
> engineering too
> 
> Thumbnails page
> 
> http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/prototype1/


That was very interesting... It's nice to know someone is thinking on that
scale, if only to raise awareness of the real time line. 

The site does leave one wanting for technical information about how the
calculating part of the clock works. I saw a thing on the ancient Greek
mechanical clocks and calculators that really left me wanting more detail as
well.

As far as interesting displays go: I personally would like to see something
like this:

A large circular hall that is unlit except for a huge glowing ball in the
center of the room representing the sun. It would not need to be full scale.
Perhaps just a section of the surface of the sun. The idea is to provide a
central light source.

On a track around the outside of the hall a detailed globe of the planet
with accurate topographical and color features is held in a gimbals and
oriented to the sun as the earth is at that instant. It needs to be large
enough that some huge man made features on the surface could just be visible
as a speck in the model. E.g. the area encompassed by the great wall of
China or the tallest skyscrapers or whatever. Laser pointers would highlight
these features as a programmed presentation cycled.

A block of cheese... No, no an accurate topographical globe of the moon
orbits the earth on an arm showing exactly where it is. If we (earthlings)
ever do a moon mission, the track of the craft could be shown as well.

And you can walk between it all and watch the sun set on some part of the
earth and turn and see the phase of the moon and so on just as if you were a
giant that was floating around the planet in space.

---
James.
 

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist