Concept → Reality · Rewritten

The 100-year clock that ends when its arc falls to the floor

In spring 2009, an NYU student hung a pulley clock on the wall whose last arc needs a century to turn once. The blogs called it the 100-year alarm clock.

The Design Blog editors

CW&T’s Time Since Launch counter, a glass tube with a 12-digit display, held in a hand

Time Since Launch by CW&T, Che-Wei Wang’s studio: a counter you start once and can never reset. AI-retouched from an image by Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0.

Verdict 2026

Shown, not shipped

The 100-year clock was built, shown at NYU’s ITP Spring Show in 2009, and is still listed by its maker as an edition of five. Its core idea, making a long span of time visible, became a product in 2018, when Che-Wei Wang’s studio CW&T crowdfunded Time Since Launch, a clock that counts up for 2,738 years.

Braun Classic Travel Alarm Clock BC02XBClosest thing you can buyBraun Classic Travel Alarm Clock BC02XB8.6Design ratingDietrich Lubs’s square dial, still intactCheck priceOur design review ↓

The idea today

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Three design-led clocks on sale today that keep the dial, or the mechanism, honest.

  • Braun Classic Travel Alarm Clock BC02XB

    Braun Classic Travel Alarm Clock BC02XB

    A palm-sized square alarm clock with a clear dial, a quiet quartz movement and a crescendo alarm. It is an actual alarm clock, which the 100-year clock never was.

    Our design review

    8.6Design rating
    Form9.3
    Material7.6
    Detail8.7
    Longevity8.5

    The BC02 descends from Dietrich Lubs’s AB 1 travel clock of the late 1980s and keeps its discipline: a 57-millimeter square case, a clear black dial, luminous-tipped hour and minute hands and a single yellow second hand. The X version adds a snooze and light function and a beep alarm that grows louder. It runs on one AA cell you replace yourself and carries a two-year warranty. The quartz movement ticks quietly rather than sweeping in silence.

    Strongest point
    Dietrich Lubs’s square dial, still intact
    Compromise
    Ticks quietly instead of sweeping silently
    Check price on Amazon
  • Braun Classic Large Wall Clock BC17B

    Braun Classic Large Wall Clock BC17B

    A 30 cm wall clock reduced to a legible dial and a silent sweeping second hand.

    Our design review

    9.1Design rating
    Form9.3
    Material8.7
    Detail9.2
    Longevity9.2

    The BC17 keeps only what you need to read the time: a matte case, a flat dial with clean markers and contrasting hour and minute hands that stay legible across a room. The yellow-tipped second hand sweeps instead of stepping, so it never ticks. It is very restrained, and some will find it too plain for a living room.

    Strongest point
    Silent sweep, high-contrast dial
    Compromise
    Almost too plain for some rooms

    Full rating in The 5 best wall clocks →

    Check price on Amazon
  • Karlsson Mini Flip Calendar Wall Clock KA5364SI

    Karlsson Mini Flip Calendar Wall Clock KA5364SI

    A flip calendar that turns over the date and weekday by itself, with a small dial for the time, so the passing days stay in view.

    Our design review

    7.4Design rating
    Form8.2
    Material6.8
    Detail7.4
    Longevity7.0

    The Mini Flip is a 9.5-inch square with rounded corners that hangs on a wall or stands on a shelf. Behind its clear front, flip leaves show the year, month, date and weekday, with Saturdays in green and Sundays in red, while the time sits on a small analog dial in the corner. The leaves turn on their own as the calendar advances. Retailers list the case as plastic, a lighter material than the retro styling suggests. It runs on five AA batteries.

    Strongest point
    Flip-leaf perpetual calendar with retro proportions
    Compromise
    Plastic case; time is a small dial
    Check price on Amazon

Product images from the retailer listings, cut out and staged with AI.

  1. 2009Che-Wei Wang publishes 3.16 Billion Cycles, a belt-and-pulley clock whose final arc turns once every 100 years.
  2. 2009The clock is shown at NYU’s ITP Spring Show as part of Wang’s series Time in Six Parts.
  3. 2009Gizmodo runs it as "The 100-Year Alarm Clock" on May 11; the Long Now Foundation’s blog covers it a day later.
  4. 2018CW&T’s Time Since Launch, a clock that counts up for 2,738 years, raises $89,435 from 455 backers on Kickstarter.
  5. 2026CW&T still sells Time Since Launch and still lists 3.16 Billion Cycles as an edition of five (checked October 2026).

What it was

3.16 Billion Cycles is a wall clock with no hands and no dial. A small synchronous motor turns once per second. A chain of rubber belts and aluminum pulleys slows that motion step by step: one wheel turns every five seconds, the next every minute, then every five minutes, hour, day, month, year and decade. The decade wheel drives a large arc that needs a hundred years to complete a single turn.

Che-Wei Wang built it for Time in Six Parts, a series he showed at the ITP Spring Show at NYU in 2009. The series set out to make scales of time that sit beyond daily experience easier to grasp. Each wheel carries a black nut, so you can follow one position as it moves. The arc is marked with 100 lines, one per year. When the century is up, the arc slides off its track and drops to the floor. That drop is the alarm.

The title comes from the count. Over a century the motor turns roughly 3.16 billion times, once for every second in 100 years, and Wang pointed out that this is close to the number of times a human heart beats in a lifetime. The finished piece is 46 inches across and six inches deep.

A clock whose alarm is a piece of aluminum hitting the floor, a century from now.

Where the idea went

Gizmodo picked the clock up in May 2009 under the nickname our original post borrowed. A day later the Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock meant to run for 10,000 years, wrote about it on its blog. Alexander Rose praised the execution but doubted that rubber belts would last the distance. The Long Now clock, designed by Danny Hillis and being assembled inside a mountain in West Texas, relies on ceramic bearings, titanium and stainless steel instead.

Wang did not chase permanence. With Taylor Levy he runs CW&T, a Brooklyn studio that makes small runs of objects about time. In 2018 the studio crowdfunded Time Since Launch: 455 backers pledged $89,435 for a sealed glass tube that starts counting days, hours, minutes and seconds the moment you pull a pin. It is built to count for one million days, about 2,738 years, and the studio estimates its batteries at more than 150 years. It was still on sale in October 2026.

What it means now

Most clocks answer one question: what time is it. The 100-year clock answers a different one: how much of this span is gone. That shift, from reading time to watching it pile up, is what CW&T later turned into a product. It is also why the piece still reads well 17 years on. Its weak point, belts that may not survive the century, is part of its honesty. Nobody who builds a hundred-year machine gets to check the result.

The original post, summarized

Our May 2009 post covered Che-Wei Wang’s pulley clock under Gizmodo’s nickname, the 100-year alarm clock, and walked through its chain of wheels and the arc that falls when the century ends. It is summarized here rather than republished.

Read the full guide
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Sources