An optical lattice clock with a variation of less than one second over 10 billion years is now available for purchase, according to a statement released Wednesday by Shimadzu Corp., a Japanese manufacturer of precision equipment. The apparatus is 114 centimeters wide, 109.3 cm tall, and 65 cm deep. The Kyoto-based manufacturer plans to sell 10 units at a suggested retail price of 500 million yen ($3.3 million) each over the course of three years.
The company started taking orders for the high-precision clock after developing a transportable model in November 2024 in collaboration with researchers from institutions including the University of Tokyo.
A professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering named Hidetoshi Katori invented the optical lattice clock in 2001. Its timekeeping uncertainty is hundreds of times lower than that of the second-generation cesium atomic clocks.
