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Comment by jodrellblank | Hacker News Reader

Practical watches are ones where it's clear at a glance which way up it goes and what the time is; they have numbers on them, preferably in a digital readout like 00:40. Watches without numbers are fashion watches. Watches with analogue faces are relics from when technology only let you decypher the time from rotating pointers. Rotating pointers where the numbers they point at have been removed are form over function.

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Technology Connections did a really interesting video showing how a traditional clock face can give a different perspective on the flow of time through the day, as the face and hand let you easily judge the remaining fraction in an hour.

I don’t think this format is antiquated at all

I find it much easier to make mental time maths on an analogue face. I mean, it's basically what a time calculator device would look like, if it existed.

24-hour ones are even better, but sadly rare.

This thread makes me think about how the common usage "a quarter past" and "a quarter two" likely come from the clock dial, and how we don't use that kind of language in other measuring scenarios - with a metre rule saying "a quarter to three metres", and how we don't say "a third past" or "a third to" meaning twenty minutes past the hour and twenty minutes to the hour.

Watches are worn on the wrist, so up is always the pinky side of the wrist.

The beauty of an analog watch is that it is a graphical display of time that doesn't even need numbers.

The hands indicate both a numeric time as well as a representative of how far through a day, hour, or minute you are.

This is the same reason that cars still have dial style gauges. The brain can parse the relative location of a rotary dial faster than it can parse 4376RPM.

Once you teach your brain how an analog clock works it reads as fast or faster than a digital clock.

Analog watches let you glance at the time more subtly while in a meeting. Numberless watches are instantly readable after you own one for a little bit.

> "Analog watches let you glance at the time more subtly while in a meeting."

... how?

LCD panels have poor viewing angles.

Numbers aren’t necessary to tell the time and the analog watch provides more information in the hours hand than digital does in the first two digits. I think you’d find that the time to tell the time can be quicker in analog than digital but I couldn’t find any studies.

I didn't say numbers were necessary, people can learn an awful lot of contortions to achieve things. I said more like: given two devices which let you know the time, one needs you to imagine a ring of natural numbers, identify which number the short hand just passed, and identify which number the long hand just passed and multiply it by five and then guesstimate how many 6-degree increments it has moved since then and add that on, then adjust for whether the short hand said "12" and it's night time or not; the other has the time written out and you can read it, the former is not the more practical one.

Given how much we read numbers in everyday life, we have more practise at reading numbers and it requires fewer steps. Analogue clock faces are only really used for time, we do that less often and it requires more work. How could it be quicker?

One cool thing about an analog watch is that, since it’s motion is synced with the rotation of the earth, you can use it as a compass.

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