Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, To Build $42 Million Grandfather Clock As A 'Symbol Of Long-Term Thinking'

The clock, which will chime an elaborate song every year, decade, century, millennium and 10 millennia, is reportedly intended to ensure that people will remember Bezos for as long as there are people.

The reason I'm doing it is that it is a symbol of long-term thinking, and the idea of long-term responsibility, Bezos told the Wall Street Journal. We humans have become so technologically sophisticated that in certain ways we're dangerous to ourselves. It's going to be increasingly important over time for humanity to take a longer-term view of its future. 

Former Amazon executive David Risher also told the Journal that Bezos thinks in decades and centuries. ... Unlike most of us, Jeff is hard-wired for the very long term.

While most of us view $42 million as an unimaginable sum, the cost of the clock won't even dent the Amazon CEO's $18 billion net worth.

For such tycoons, such extravagant projects are not unfamiliar territory, Earlier this year Bezos dragged the engines from Apollo 11, the spacecraft that took the first men to the moon, up from the bottom of the ocean and also started Blue Origins, a space travel company.

Jeff Bezos, as founder of Amazon.com, is key figure in the wave of e-commerce that has transformed retail, and put many stores out of business.

A former Wall Streeter, Bezos got out of the hedge fund industry so that he could sell books online from his Seattle garage.

He founded Amazon.com in 1994 and took it public three years later. Amazon didn't turn a profit until late 2001.

Under his guidance, Amazon eventually became the largest retailer on the internet and the model for Internet sales.