I first learned that expression from a friend who worked in time services at the Naval Observatory, and literally flew around the world with atomic clocks when that was the only way to precisely synchronize remote clocks.
What if they draw a box and write the time inside, forming each digit by using up to 7 little straight lines?
Little things DO matter, and I think reading an analog clock is one of those little things that should be learned.
Does a person know the ABCs? or is it all spell-ckeck and you don’t need that anymore? How about simple math, addition and subtraction? Do you just pay whatever is on the bill without question? Or are you being taken advantage of? You probably don’t often need algebra, but all it is useful if you know 2 facts and not a third, you can figure out what the answer to the third is.
Knowlege is power. the more you know, the more power you have.
The classrooms in the high school where I teach all have analog clocks.
Just today, I had a student tell me he didn’t know how to read one.
This was one of the lower-level students. But it made me wonder: just how hard is it to learn how to read an analog clock? How much time and effort would it take a person of average intellegence to go from not knowing how to knowing how? It seems to me like a really easy skill to pick up, but I’ve known how since I was very young, so what’s obvious to me may not be obvious to others.
Looking at one’s phone requires pulling it out of one’s pocket (or wherever it’s kept) and waking it up. Not that big a deal, most of the time, but still harder than just glancing up at the wall or down at my wrist, especially if my hands are full.
Because math is something you can work out in your head. It’s good exercise for the brain.
There’s no “working it out in your head’ when you need to know what time it is. You need a tool for that.
And a better tool for telling time is a digital clock.
Once we invent better tools for something the old ones tend to become obsolete.
Just like we don’t use a oil lamps to light our homes anymore because we have light bulbs.
Furthermore, knowing things changes the brain in ways that may not be obvious. It is possible that learning to read an analog clock strengthens parts of the brain that are used in other useful tasks, though I don’t know that that’s true.
Just speaking for me personally, I tend to look at my phone out of a force of habit not because it’s easier and I know it’s there. (And I know the time is correct)
Why is it a better tool?
I have a fairly good sense of time, which means I can often guess pretty closely about what time it is even if I haven’t looked at a clock in a while. I have no idea whether this is just something I naturally have, or something I developed, and if the latter, whether often looking at clocks helped me to develop this, or whether it mattered whether those clocks were analog or digital.
If the time is 2:23 is it easier to read that on an analog clock or a digital one?
Unless you have really good eyesight I’m going to go with the digital one.
Also digital clocks are more intuitive. I don’t think people need to be taught how to read a digital clock. Unless they’re too young to know their numbers.
That is precisely the point of the article I linked above.
Why Analog Clocks Still Matter in 2025: Educational Benefits & Research | TimeLab
Then they would fail the test.
The “clock face” test is often used as a cognitive test for dementia. AIUI it’s used here for driver’s license renewals once you’re past the age of 80.
How often is it important to know the time to the minute? I would also argue that if the big hand is an equal distance between the 4 and the 5 it is ridiculously easy to read that on an analog clock. 2:22 might be a bit harder, but again, how often is that important? How often has someone shown up to an interview late and said “sorry, all I had was an analog clock”? What specific problems does a digital timepiece solve? (And I mean for people who are capable of reading both)
You asked me why a digital clock is better.
I answered your question. If you want to dispute that part that’s fine. But I also said digital clocks are more intuitive.
And to the last part of your post, I was asking about younger generations being able to read analog clocks.
I wasn’t asking about people able to read both. And what clock they should use.
Here are ~150 recent posts on the upsides and downsides to analog vs digital clocks. Lots of points upthread were made there just 4 months ago.
Sorry folks, I should have linked this in way back at my post #2.
I don’t know where your “here” is, but I’ve been in a lot of classrooms in a lot of Ohio schools, and almost all of them have an analog clock prominently displayed, and almost none of them have a digital clock unless you count the little one in the corner of the smartboard screen.
And anecdotally, my students do read them. Last year, the battery in my clock died, and it was stopped… at one minute til lunchtime. Some of my students (in the class right before lunch) told me that it was very frustrating.
Digital clocks are only more intuitive if you consider the goal to be to know the precise time right this moment. If, however, you want to know relative times, like how much longer until class is over, analog is much more intuitive. Right now, the minute hand is here. At the end of class, it’ll be there. The amount of time until then is how big that angle is.
This feels kind of like saying that English is a better language than French because if something is written in French you have to translate it into English to understand what it says.
If the time is 2:23, it’s easier to tell the exact hour and minute from a digital clock, but it may well be easier to tell that it’s a bit less than half past two from an analog clock.
Reminds me a bit of the New Yorker cartoon showing a set of wall clocks in an airport labeled “New York,” “One Hour Behind New York,” “Two Hours Behind New York”…
Funny. I was just talking to my daughter about this on our drive home from middle school yesterday, how A&W’s 1/3 pound burger failed against McD’s 1/4 pounder, though priced the same or less, because Americans thought 1/3 was smaller than 1/4. The story seems to be verified, but it’s always rung a little odd to me. Would these same consumers have had the same problem with a half-pounder vs a quarter-pounder? I suspect they wouldn’t have made the same error. Is it because a third is just less common to come across? Part of me feels this is just an excuse by A&W for why their burger failed, but nobody seems to reject the findings that too many Americans thought 1/3 is smaller than 1/4, so I guess I have to begrudgingly accept it.
No, I didn’t. I was following up on your response to Thudlow_Boink, and I asked you what specific problem a digital clock solves. You didn’t answer my question.
You say that like it’s an objective fact that applies to everyone. That’s your opinion and it’s valid, but it’s not a statement of fact.
Let’s use your example of 2:23. You have a 3:00 meeting and want to know how much time you have. If you glance at an analog clock it’s easy to visualize that you have 35-40 minutes before your meeting. Looking at a digital clock, now you have to do math to come up with 37 minutes. I’m not saying either one is a bad thing or a problem, but I certainly wouldn’t call a subtraction problem more intuitive than a visual image.
When I waded into this conversation I didn’t really have an opinion, because to me the key word was important. Since all my kids are done with school and I am not a teacher, it seems to me that my opinion on what is important for younger generations to learn is kind of meaningless. A man of my age griping about kids not knowing how to read an analog clock is like shaking my fist at the sky.
Having discussed it, and done some reading, I now have an opinion. It’s probably just as meaningless, but I think I’m a bit more informed for having pondered the question. So thanks for that.