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Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

Before this current smartwatch craze, it looked like actually digital watches were on their way out. People who wear watches as a status symbol wore elaborate mechanical ones, people that just needed time used their phones. I haven't seen a person with a digital watch for a while (maybe just the company I keep :). Now, of course, they are back.

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The only thing I use a digital watch for (or any watch for that reason) is when I'm in the outdoors. It's waterproof, has a 10 year battery, and is a lot sturdier than a phone.

That reminds me of a cool trick that not many people seem to know, you can tell north with a analog watch: http://modernsurvivalblog.com/survival-skills/how-to-use-a-w...

I used to have a little Java app on an old pre-smartphone which drew a sundial on the screen; point the little arrow at the sun, and the big arrow would point north. You told it roughly where you were and it used the phone's click to figure out where the sun should be.

It worked really well.

...I'd say that modern phones with internal compasses have obsoleted this technique, but given how unreliable phone compasses are, I wonder whether I should try producing an Android version.

Hm, anecdotally I have seen this trick printed in so many kid magazines and books that I thought everybody knew it. Nevertheless, I have never had a need for it.

I remember reading about it a long time ago - since then I started paying attention to the sun while going to school (when there was a sun to watch, Tromsø has ~two months of polar night, and quite a few months where the sun doesn't rise until long after school starts).

So now I can generally (roughly) tell the time by looking at the sun, if I'm somewhere familiar (I know where north is) - and I can generally tell where north it is by looking at the sun, if I know the time.

I suppose most people (ie, those that don't live near the poles) can tell time roughly just by how high the sun is/how long the shadows are - but it's a little tricky in most of Norway, most of the year (except maybe around noon).

That's an excellent trick, although ironically I'd only ever use it in a city. Out in the woods, I'd have a cheap digital (or nothing) and a compass.

You could always draw a clock dial on the ground if you actually needed to use it.

An always relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1420/

There was a period during the late 19th and early 20th century where pocket watches were reasonably priced and available and yet wristwatches had not appeared. It was WW1 which seems to have made it popular (along with disposable razor shaving, IIRC).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_watches#1920_Wristw...

I have a 1913 wristwatch in my collection. But, I don't seem to have time to wear that and many fine mechanical watches any more; my smartwatch is so useful I end up wearing that instead.

Sometimes I think that it is somewhat disappointing that things didn't work out the way this mid-1980s science fiction game thought they would:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nunnwt6ex5bo7e6/hand_computer.pdf?...

You could always get yourself a Pip-Boy 3000: http://store.bethsoft.com/pip-boy-deluxe-bluetooth-edition.h...

Tempting, but still lacks some of the required features. I'm looking for something that I can use to send text messages, set timers and, most importantly, set reminders (also accessible via a web interface) using my voice, without some nefarious company keeping copies and tracking my usage. I.e. the moon on a stick. ;-)

Do you know from which game does your picture comes from?

Looks like it is from a rpg book, not a computer game. My first guess was GURPS by Steve Jackson Games (General Universal Roleplaying System) - but I'm leaning towards one of the oldest roleplaying games (which AFAIK has been "computerized" several times): Traveller.

The "tech level" indicates which level of technology is needed for a particular piece of equipment to be available and/or normal (won't get you burned at the stake for using "magic") - in Traveller it is used to label different worlds in the universe AFAIK - with GURPS it also extends to cross-dimensinal travel, alternate realities, time travel etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_%28role-playing_game...

Thank you for your answer.

(I had realised it should have been from a rpg, but I kept the game term from the previous comment to avoid confusion)

It is indeed Traveller; MegaTraveller, to be precise. In those tech levels the best we could claim to be is early TL9, with laser weapons &c. We're supposed to have early fusion power, FTL and anti-gravity by the end of TL9, IIRC. I think that TL11 mentioned in the list is at a level where those three technologies are well established and their use routine.

My good old Casio F91W never runs out of style.

Keep in mind that Adams wrote Hitchhikers for BBC radio and it was first broadcast in 1978. This means that he developed it in ~1976 to 1977. The first Seiko digital wristwatch, the Astron, was released on Christmas 1969, and popular adoption can then be assumed to be ~1970+. So, for Adams, the digital watch was only 6-8 years old, still fairly new. I mention this, as it puts the quote in the context of the time. Adams meant that the digital wristwatch was an amazing thing still; such amazing precise time, so cheap, so small. And then Adams says that this amazing tech is just a pittance to the rest of the universe. It's typical British humor, but in a different way than we see it now.

So, when you say "People who wear watches as a status symbol wore elaborate mechanical ones, people that just needed time used their phones." you are wrong in the context of the time Adams was talking about. Digital was very much 'cool' back then, or at least not 'cheap' as we see it today. Also, no-one had a mobile in 1978, as they were first introduced in 1979 (and had no clock).

As for today, fashion works in cycles, and among hipsters the digital is 'in', but who really knows. We do know that the Casio F-91 is the watch of choice for IEDs and Casio admits that they sell "well" 25 years after introduction. I remember reading that the F-91 is a graduation 'gift'/shibboleth for IED school grads, but I can't find the source. I guess that earns a fair amount of street-cred or 'cool' in certain circles (of bastard child-killer terrorists). If you do see a group of people with a lot of old Casio F-91 watches, I really hope they are not company you keep!

> Adams meant that the digital wristwatch was an amazing thing still; such amazing precise time, so cheap, so small.

Actually, this Q&A from one of his (amazing) talks seems to show otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0keUhMiZ44

I had not seen that, thanks!

There is a smart watch craze?

Yes, among makers of watches and phones.

I know one person who uses an Apple Watch regularly. I asked if they were worth buying, and got the answer "I won this. It's pretty nice for something free, I guess."

Again, maybe the company I keep :)

I think not!

> people that just needed time used their phones. I haven't seen a person with a digital watch for a while

I kept my watch. Still wear it. My Fermi estimate is that it's 100 times faster to check the time on your watch than on the phone you have to get out of your pocket. It makes a big difference.

I think between 2x and 20x, depending on things like whether you're wearing a long-sleeved shirt, what other stuff you have in your pocket, etc. I can't see how it could ever be 100x and even the 20x end of the range I gave is probably too high.

I suspect you're greatly underestimating how quickly you can check the time with a watch on your wrist. Even if literally no thought were required, human reflexes are on the order of 200ms latency; 100x more than that would be 20 seconds. In reality, there's a conscious element and that always slows things way down. I don't think the actual effective time taken to check the time by any means at all is ever less than about a second, even if it feels faster. Maaaybe half a second if you truly don't need to move anything but your eyeballs.

On the other hand, I find that it usually takes me 3-4s to get my phone out of my pocket and check the time on it.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/84/

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