Analog vs. Digital Clocks
This is a stupid argument, I know. What better place to voice my opinion?
Summary: The Analog Clock is better because it more accurately reflects the actual meaning of time. The digital clock is inferior because more interpretation is necessary to read it.
Essentially, time is a benchmark we use to keep track of the day's progression. In most places in the world, a reasonable approximation of the time can be found by looking up at where the sun is in the sky. For the sake of argument, let's say we're living on the equator and the sun rises and sets at 6 every day. If you were standing outside during the day looking south, the sun would be to your left in the morning and to your right in the afternoon.
Similarly, if you look at the hour hand on the clock face, it'll be on the left side of the face during the morning and on the right side in the afternoon. Of course, the minute hand can complicate things since it's all over the place no matter what part of the day it is, but we'll assume that you can discern between the hour and minute hands (it's pretty easy). In fact, I had a clock once which had color-coded hands to make it even easier.
The argument can be made that the advantage is only clear for those who have an easier time interpreting pictures rather than words. But I think it goes further than that.
Let's say they decided to change the way time was represented. Liken it to the shift to the metric system. Even though it is simpler and more logical, everyone's not willing to change because the old ways are so ingrained in our thinking. If we changed our day to a 10-hour format, where noon was 5 o'clock and midnight was zero o'clock, it would be amazingly confusing for those people who relied on digital clocks. You'd wake up around 3, get out of work around 6 or 7, go to sleep at 8 or 9. Chaos ensues.
Back up a sec, and think of the people with analog clocks. If you drop the minute and second hands, the hour hand could still go around twice a day. Thus, your morning would be about
noon would be about
and your workday would end about
So, the analog clock, omitting minute and second hands (which are really just benchmarks to more accurately tell where we are in the current hour), is unchanged when moving to a "metric" time system.
Actually, in reality I think I just proved myself wrong. The analog clock would be so obsolete if we moved to metric time.
On that tangent...
Currently, 24 hours x 60 minutes = 1440 minutes per day
Under my crazy "metric" time, you could say 10 d-hours per day, 10 d-minutes per d-hour, 10 d-seconds per d-minute. Time becomes a straight-up base-10 number. 100 d-minutes per day means each d-minute is 14.4 minutes long. 1000 d-seconds per day means a d-second becomes 1.44 minutes long. Then, go with tenths and hundredths of d-seconds, a tenth being 8.64 seconds, a hundredth being .864 seconds. I'd put the decimal just before fractions of d-seconds.
So, if it's 312.50 (7:30am), I'd be late for work!
Hey, it's 500! Lunchtime!
If it's 687.50, it's time to crack a beer!
If it's 999.90 On December 31st, you should have champagne nearby!
On second thought, analog watches would then have 5 hands (unless you omitted some). Not exactly easier to read, I guess.
Word
That's all for now.
Summary: The Analog Clock is better because it more accurately reflects the actual meaning of time. The digital clock is inferior because more interpretation is necessary to read it.
Essentially, time is a benchmark we use to keep track of the day's progression. In most places in the world, a reasonable approximation of the time can be found by looking up at where the sun is in the sky. For the sake of argument, let's say we're living on the equator and the sun rises and sets at 6 every day. If you were standing outside during the day looking south, the sun would be to your left in the morning and to your right in the afternoon.
Similarly, if you look at the hour hand on the clock face, it'll be on the left side of the face during the morning and on the right side in the afternoon. Of course, the minute hand can complicate things since it's all over the place no matter what part of the day it is, but we'll assume that you can discern between the hour and minute hands (it's pretty easy). In fact, I had a clock once which had color-coded hands to make it even easier.
The argument can be made that the advantage is only clear for those who have an easier time interpreting pictures rather than words. But I think it goes further than that.
Let's say they decided to change the way time was represented. Liken it to the shift to the metric system. Even though it is simpler and more logical, everyone's not willing to change because the old ways are so ingrained in our thinking. If we changed our day to a 10-hour format, where noon was 5 o'clock and midnight was zero o'clock, it would be amazingly confusing for those people who relied on digital clocks. You'd wake up around 3, get out of work around 6 or 7, go to sleep at 8 or 9. Chaos ensues.
Back up a sec, and think of the people with analog clocks. If you drop the minute and second hands, the hour hand could still go around twice a day. Thus, your morning would be about
noon would be about
and your workday would end about
So, the analog clock, omitting minute and second hands (which are really just benchmarks to more accurately tell where we are in the current hour), is unchanged when moving to a "metric" time system.
Actually, in reality I think I just proved myself wrong. The analog clock would be so obsolete if we moved to metric time.
On that tangent...
Currently, 24 hours x 60 minutes = 1440 minutes per day
Under my crazy "metric" time, you could say 10 d-hours per day, 10 d-minutes per d-hour, 10 d-seconds per d-minute. Time becomes a straight-up base-10 number. 100 d-minutes per day means each d-minute is 14.4 minutes long. 1000 d-seconds per day means a d-second becomes 1.44 minutes long. Then, go with tenths and hundredths of d-seconds, a tenth being 8.64 seconds, a hundredth being .864 seconds. I'd put the decimal just before fractions of d-seconds.
So, if it's 312.50 (7:30am), I'd be late for work!
Hey, it's 500! Lunchtime!
If it's 687.50, it's time to crack a beer!
If it's 999.90 On December 31st, you should have champagne nearby!
On second thought, analog watches would then have 5 hands (unless you omitted some). Not exactly easier to read, I guess.
Word
That's all for now.
posted by james at 5/16/2005 10:55:00 AM
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3 Comments:
It might work on a digital clock. Digital displays are easily adaptable to any time format imaginable.
This was tried during the French Revolution. It did not catch on as easily as the rest of the metric system created at the same time. Clocks (only analog dials existed then) has to be retooled, recalibrated, and the dials had to be completely redone. Digital clocks could easily be made to show the new format, but the old format is so ingrained that it would not sell very well.
yeah digital clocks are nice i think ... great blog .
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