I noticed this with my youngest when I put an antique clock in the living room. She’d stand there and ask me what time it was, and I’d tell her to look at the clock. She’s a smart kid, and had been taught how to read a dial clock, but they didn’t have clocks in her classrooms. She was so unused to a dial clock that she had to stop and count through to calculate the minutes, and said she hated it and didn’t like how imprecise it was. It took a while to get her to accept.
I’m thinking I need to make sure they learn more of these old-timey skills that we take for granted. A lot of young people struggle to read cursive, too.
We bought an analog clock when our daughter was in kindergarten thirty years ago, just for this reason. It was on the wall in the kitchen and we used it to teach her clockwise and counter clockwise, too.
Kindergarten and first-grade teachers would have lessons, of course, and practice clocks, and worksheets to complete, but that’s not the same as living with one or talking to native analog clock speakers (my husband and I) who could use six-fifty or ten to seven in the same sentence, and of course a couple of ten-minute lessons don’t do much.
I was a teacher, and analog clocks disappeared from the classrooms and hallways years ago, so it’s not as if the kids see them anywhere if a parent doesn’t buy one for home.
Have you seen a train or movie schedule recently? They are written in the same way that a digital clock displays time. I’ve never seen a schedule that says “10 till 6” instead of 5:50.
I do think it is a shame that so many people have not learned how to tell time using an analog clock. I am reminded of a scene from one of my favorite books, Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, written a hundred years ago. In this scene Aunt Abigail is showing Betsy a sundial:
I agree with Aunt Abigail about our wits flying out the window. I suppose in a few decades analog clocks will seem as quaint as sundials.
Theory: Analog clocks make you think of time differently. People who are familiar with analog clocks can visualize amounts of time, in a way that people who only know digital clocks can’t; and they’ve been trained to think of time as continuous, rather than discrete.
They also help kids understand continuous quantities in general, and why rounding and “closeness” work the way they do, since they make it far more natural to refer to a time like 6:45 as “15 till 7” or “a quarter to 7,” and make it obvious why such a time is nearer to 7:00 than to 6:00.
That’s my theory, anyway; I don’t know how much water it holds.
To add to the other comments, I don’t know what kind of people you’re dealing with, but that’s not at all a common response–so much so, that I could say I’d say I had never heard anyone round down 5:57 (or similarly close-to-the-next-hour time) down to “5 o’clock.” It’s either “Five fifty seven” (probably most common), “almost six,” or just “six.”
If you were brought up having to read a clepsydra, you’d have experience mentally gauging volumes of water, and you’d know exactly how much water it holds.
Train schedules have always said 5:50 (unless they say 17:50). How else could you do it compactly? That’s not the question. When my mother asked me to read the kitchen clock, I would tell her, "The little hand is between the 9 and 10 and the big hand is between the 6 and 7 and she would tell me that it is 9:30 or 25 of 10. After a very short time, I caught on.
The clocks in my building are all analog, so if students can’t read them, they have to get the time from their phones. I think I can read an approximate time off an analog clock much faster than from a digital one. All it takes is a quick glance. But it is skill of declining importance.
As mentioned above, it’s a useful tool to teach fractions as well as learning to read an analog clock. Learning doesn’t have to be important to be useful.
Supposedly studies show that the mind reacts more quickly to dangerous levels on gauges rather than digital displays. Perhaps that is only true for folks who have analog clocks.
Some video phones display a clock face rather than a digital readout for time. The damn things should do something when not being used to speak with someone else.
On an analog clock, 5:57 looks like “almost six,” in a way that it doesn’t on a digital clock.
I agree with you that almost anyone who looks at a digital clock that says “5:57” will think to themselves “It’s almost six o’clock,” thanks to a long familiarity with the way time is measured. My question would be whether experience with analog clocks makes it quicker or easier or more natural for a person to have gained such familiarity in the first place.
I flew with 99% analog gauges.
Digital vertical indicators work good also IMO.
When sweeping your gauges during most flight time you are looking for something that is changing or different. Not an actual number. A needle in a different position is something the human eye/brain can spot very easily. At a glance at a panel full of numbers, 850 and 820 can be missed very easy in my experience.
The all glass cockpits of the modern airline or business jet may alow the pilots to adapt, that would best be answered by LSL Guy or Richard P or one of the other big plane pilots.
With auto alarms and talking computers, they call out things that are not as they are supposed to be. During a very busy or dangerous situation, if that function failed and the pilot had to see the or be aware of the changes using just their eyes, it could be very dicey.
That is where analog gauges and being used to their normal position is much faster to not what is changing.
Will be interesting to hear what the big iron pilots say about this.
I had a discussion in the lab of an electronics course about digital vs. analog instruments. The guy said that all aircraft gauges would soon be digital. I pointed out that when a duck flew through the cockpit you might lose all your electronic instrumentation, but some devices like an altimeter that worked on air pressure may survive. The cover of IEEE magazine that month had a picture of a digital instument panel. The frame around a CRT held a level.
I agree with the “think differently” theory. I have both analog and digital watches (and a few with both). When I’m wearing one of the digital watches, time seems more precise and exact; I feel more professional and productive. When I wear the analog ones, time seems more casual. I almost feel like I’m on vacation.
Well, yes, that part of the post I was responding to was completely clear. Doesn’t change the point that I have literally never heard anyone refer to 5:57 as 5 p.m. I doubt familiarity with analog clocks has much to do with it. 998 looks like “almost 1000” not “900” in the same way. (In fact, I would expect the errors more likely to occur with the analog clock. I know I, as a kid, had a little difficulty parsing the analog positions for 5:45 as 5:45, not 6:45. I mean, the hour hand was close to the 6! Seemed natural to make that error.)
