Bill Nye moved to Seattle in 1977 to work as an engineer at Boeing and later for Sundstrand Data Control. In the early 1980s he began to do stand-up comedy and eventually was hired as a writer and performer on the Seattle TV comedy show Almost Live! It was there that he built the Bill Nye the Science Guy character, doing wildly popular comedic science demonstrations alongside show host John Keister. Nye partnered with producers James McKenna and Erren Gottlieb to pitch a “Bill Nye the Science Guy” show to various TV stations. It was picked up by Seattle’s PBS member station KCTS and was filmed and produced in Seattle from 1993-1999. With funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, it became the first TV show to be broadcast concurrently on public and commercial stations, as it was made available for syndication through Disney. After the run of the show, Nye continued to work in television and advocate for science, and to write books about science for children and adults. As of 2024, Nye continues to serve as the CEO of the Planetary Society, and to educate the public on matters of science. In June 2024, Nye was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in television.

In 1998, Nye convinced NASA to add a sundial to their future Martian rover. Nye asked University of Washington astronomer Woody Sullivan and machinist Larry Stark to work with Nye's alma mater Cornell University to design and build the first extraterrestrial sundial, dubbed the "MarsDial," for two NASA rovers that landed on Mars in January 2004. The project was designed to help measure colors and time on Mars and to operate as backup to orient the rovers. Nye and Sullivan simultaneously launched a related EarthDial project sponsored by the Planetary Society, in which the public could create their own sundials to match the tracking of time on Mars to Earth.

In this photo, Nye and Sullivan use a mockup to show how the MarsDial works.

Caption information source: "Bill Nye's Sundial Hitches a Ride to Mars - Science Guy's New Device Important as NASA Backup," by Tom Paulson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 23, 2003.