Back in the days when I had an analogue watch, rather than a serious computer, strapped to my wrist, I often wondered whether life would be more or less stressful if I removed the minute and second hands, so that I could only tell the time to, say, the nearest 5-10 minutes. Would I be more likely to be on time for meetings, for example, or would I still try to squeeze other things in right up until the last minute?
Well, it turns out I wasn’t the only one to find this idea at least intriguing. Enter Slow Watches, who make some rather nice designs with a single hand. In their case, they chose to make this hand rotate every 24 hours instead of 12, to ‘follow the natural rhythm of the sun’.
Now, that’s quite poetic, and I like the way midnight is at the bottom, so the hand will rise and set in a way that should feel natural, at least if you live in the northern hemisphere. But it might take longer for you to be able to glance at it and know that it’s roughly half-past two.
I’ve got so used to all the wonderful facilities of my Apple Watch that I find it hard to imagine exchanging it for anything, though there’s no denying that these are more aesthetically appealing.
What do you think? Would your quality of life improve if you could only tell the time to the nearest 15 mins or so?
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This is the kind of innovation I expected when smart watches came out. A 24 hour watch would be easy to write in software, and you could switch to a more precise clock if needed. Unfortunately most of the digital watch faces seem to be either very traditional or fitness focused.
Yes, it’s a real pity that it’s hard/impossible to write new watch faces for many of these devices…
The sun rises and sets in the southern hemisphere just as it does in the north, just that relatively low-arcing winter suns and relatively high-arcing summer suns alternate between the hemispheres. Even down under, the sun is still up, although it itself will be flipped vertically compared to being viewed from the north (this effect is much easier to see with the Moon), that part owing to the down under part.
Yes, my comment was really that we see the sun move left to right in the northern hemisphere, which is the same direction as the hand of the watch as it moves from dawn to dusk.
Left to right if you’re looking south (although if you’re in the south, you’d look north and watch it go right to left). The alternative would be to make the watch run counter-clockwise.