Clock faces
Is it true that this is normal for a US clock face?
It confuses my brain.
I also prefer Roman numerals to plain numbers.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/7yqpBzp5mNxB3sVCA
It confuses my brain.
I also prefer Roman numerals to plain numbers.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/7yqpBzp5mNxB3sVCA
Comments
I see a lot of conversation on social media where people are surprised to see a Roman numeral clock where 4 is IIII instead of IV, and then people are telling them that is the traditional way for clocks. And I remember that from my childhood, seeing IIII on clocks.
The freakiest clock I've seen was a backwards one, at a coffee shop - it went anticlockwise. Mirror image, though the numbers were the right way round. It was too confusing for me!
I have researched the use of IV and IIII and (to save you the bother) nobody really knows why IIII was so widely use. On theory is that, using the Roman numerals and the IIII formation leaves you with 20 Is on the dial, and if you are punching the numerals out of a sheet of metal, an even number like 20 is more efficient to punch than an odd number (17) that you would otherwise need. But that is just a theory.
I II III IIII V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII
https://share.google/LGnWAMfEGEJSCpuxy
@Boogie, of those selections, I think my favorite is the one that looks like a large pocket watch sticking out from the wall.
I'm sure it used to be more common, here in the UK. Maybe it's more an old fashioned thing than an American thing. Roman numerals always radiate out. When regular numbers radiate out, they are flipped at the lower half of the clock, or else the 6 will become a 9. I remember this from my childhood, in the 1970s, because I noticed it and asked questions about why the regular numbers were flipped and the Roman numerals weren't.
But also there are clocks with regular numbers where they are all upright, and they are more common, these days, at least. Though analogue clocks on walls are less and less common anyway, now people generally have smartphones.
Whenever I draw a clock, I radiate the numbers out and sometimes forget to flip 4!
I'll note that that says "designed in England" on the face.
The normal-looking clock on the US wall I'm currently looking at has standard (arabic) numbers oriented vertically.
The thing you show, with the random-looking orientation of the numerals, would do my head in.
You wouldn't like my house, because I went searching for both a ticking and chiming clock, found one, and love it.
Take the printed lower case letter g, for instance. As a kid, I noticed that this was very different from a written g, I found it very weird, it bothered me a lot, and so I spent time analysing it to understand what was going on. But I don't think most other kids did, because apparently most people can't recognise the letter g, even though they've been seeing it all their life.
Oh, I am quite on the opposite end of the scale. I love the tick-tock of a clock. I brought a mantle clock into my office at work precisely so that I would have a gentle tick-tock in the background to keep me calm. One of the things I hate about traveling is having to sleep in a hotel room--with no clocks ticking. The silence is unsettling to me.
Yes, I spotted this when I was a child and practiced drawing it (didn't find out why it looked like this for years, and then I started studying early printing, fonts, etc.). Very odd.
No. That's hideous.
Yes.
I think the one I linked to was trying to emulate the Roman numeral style.
My brother had a reverse clock and put it on his bedroom wall in a particular position so that when he was in bed he would see it in a mirror.
Another Roman numeral fan here, especially for IIII.
Ah, it makes sense for mirror usage. In the coffee shop it was just there as a novelty.
Difficulty reading analogue clocks can be part of various neurodivergencies - certainly I have struggled to read analogue clocks my whole life, and the kind of analogue clocks without numbers or with only a few numbers are basically impossible for me to read.
Very few students in the middle school (grades 6-8 -- approximately 1000 kids) where I work can. Very few.
Mrs Gramps and I do have a wind-up clock that happily ticks away in our living area. Wind it up every Saturday. If I forget, and it winds down, things get strangely quiet. Something is not right.
From time to time, we do have to silence it if we have overnight guests that have problems with the ticking.
Working with teens, plenty can't, but equally I remember when I was in secondary school, in the 1980s, when digital watches became a thing, plenty of kids said then that they didn't understand time when someone said it in analogue, and they asked for it in digital. It makes sense, when clocks change format, for people to adapt to that format.
And hardly any of them can hitch a horse to a rail, or sharpen a quill nib pen.
The wristwatch was invented because it was more convenient than having to check a pocket watch. Kids nowadays don’t wear wristwatches as they use their phones to tell the time. We seem to have come full circle.
Though smartwatches are now a thing, and in the same way that smartphones are not primarily about the phone, smartwatches are not primarily about the time. I haven't observed how many kids wear them though. Perhaps tracking health and fitness is more an adult thing.
Yesterday my son ( 51) and I were in the garden. Just as I was wondering what the time was he looked at his watch but said nothing, so I asked him the time. He didn’t know as he was just checking a message. Or his blood sugar or heart rate, but not the time.
Mr Puzzler had about 10 working clocks, and many more not working, a mixture of Roman numerals and numbers, but none like the OP.
https://tinyurl.com/3747ja68
I remember plenty of clocks like that from my childhood - they seemed designed to confuse me! And the ones that only had 12, 3, 6 and 9. Had I known digital clocks would be in the near future, I definitely wouldn't have bothered spending so much time and stress trying to figure out analogue ones in primary school!
I am generally in favor of people knowing more and not less.
Clock faces and watch faces of that style are very common in my experience.
Interesting. I would never associate fractions with clock faces, except for quarters. I mean, we don’t talk about sixths or twelfths of an hour. I figure that as long as you have knowledge of cakes or pies cut into slices, then there’s a reference point for fractions.
When I was growing up, we had a wall clock in our den that looked very much like this. (Yes, the hands went counter-clockwise.) My parents always enjoyed the double take of a visitor checking the time on it for the first time.
What surprised me was how easily we learned to read it, and how quickly we got to where we could go back and forth from it to normal clocks and watches.
It makes me think that “kids can’t read analog clocks” is something of an overblown problem. If they need to be able to read one (and why teach it if they don’t need to know how), it’s easy to learn.
I’m realizing I don’t actually know if my kids (27 and 24) can read analog clocks. I suspect they can, because I think their classrooms in school had them. But I should ask.
Both my sons, 21 and 24, can read analogue clocks perfectly well. I asked them last time this subject came up in a forum and they thought the idea that they wouldn’t be able to was a bit odd. Analogue watches have also become fashionable among young people lately; I know at least one 13 year who wears one.
One of my son's classmates (aged 9) was the subject of a phonecall home because he was using his new smartwatch in class. The teacher was concerned that he might be distracting other classmates. It turns out that what he was actually doing was giving his mother a play-by-play of the classroom.
(I gave up wearing a watch when I was 18-19, because the wristband would get unpleasantly sweaty, would itch and cause an eczema flare-up. I now carry a phone, which I use as a timepiece. I find the fact that I have my phone set on the 24 hour clock causes confused and incredulous looks from many kids.)