The queue to view a famous object has reached a length that, laid end to end, exceeds the period during which the object has existed, according to a calculation nobody requested.

Visitors will queue for approximately four hours to look at the object for ninety seconds, of which sixty will be spent photographing it.

“I saw it,” said visitor Antonia Delacroix-Ruiz, six seconds after seeing it. “It was smaller.”

The Institute for Anticipated Monuments reports that every famous object is smaller, and that this is now the primary thing known about it.

“The reaction is not disappointment,” said Dr. Torben Aalto. “It is recalibration, performed aloud, so that others in the queue understand you have arrived.”

Institute figures show the average visitor spends 4 per cent of their visit looking at the object, 22 per cent photographing it, and 74 per cent looking at the back of a stranger’s head while shuffling towards it.

The object itself remains unchanged and unbothered. It has been looked at by an estimated ninety million people and has not, at any point, made an effort.

Delacroix-Ruiz has recommended the visit to three friends, all of whom will go.