Ticking to eternity

A 10,000-Year Clock, a monument-size mechanical clock designed to measure time for 10 millennia is discussed. Danny Hillis, an electrical engineer with three degrees from MIT who pioneered parallel super computers at Thinking Machines Corp., worked for Walt Disney Imagineering, and then cofounded the consultancy Applied Minds, dreamed up the project in 1995 to get people thinking more about the distant future. But the clock is no longer just a thought experiment. In a cluttered machine shop near a Starbucks in San Rafael, Calif., it's finally ticking to life.