I just returned from my 6th trip to Europe, and am puzzled by one thing: Why did I see only one 24-hour clock? It was in a train station, and had the additional numbers smaller, closer to the center than the normal ones. This made it extremely easy for me to tell time after 12:59 pm. So if y’all actually use numbers up to 24 (or 23:59), why not put them on clocks?
Many of the older clocks in public spaces won’t have them and it’s probably not worth updating them. I’ve seen plenty of newer clocks in public spaces throughout Europe, but they’re electronic and obviously can show 24 hours times more easily.
Because, uh, we know that if big hand is at five and it’s afternoon then we read it as “seventeenth”. Additional numbers are redundant. We all learn clock in ours preschool days. I bet that most people here would see double numbering as confusing and fairly silly.
Never understood why this is so confusing to people.
Seriously…anything past 12, you just subtract 12.
18 minus 12 is 6:00 PM, 21 minus 12 is 9:00PM, 13 minus 12 is 1:00PM. Is this really so difficult? (And I don’t just mean you, panache45, I mean most Americans traveling through Europe.)
Now, Berliners have an odd way to express time…they say it is “quarter five”, which does NOT mean a quarter TO five, it means it is 4:15 (a quarter of the way to five) or it is three quarters eight, which does not mean 8:45, it means three quarters towards 8 - (7:45)…granted, not all that complicated, but when they say it fast, you have to think for a minute. I believe Berlin is the only city in Germany, and perhaps all of Europe, to tell time this way and it confuses the hell out of non-Berliners, even other Germans.