Why don’t people set their alarms later?
In my case, it is because then I would just be getting up even later. I am quite difficult to wake up.
Correction!
I asked her, and apparently her snooze goes off exactly every 9 minutes…
My alarm clock originally had a (default) snooze time of 9 minutes, however I have apparently changed that (probably when hitting the snooze button) to a 7-minute snooze.
From the column’s penultimate theory:
*Why not put the snooze counter on the tens column and advance that by one?
*
Because if you hit the snooze at 9:08, it would ring again in two minutes. I think this answer was to glibly rejected.
A very good point, veg_all; it was also made in the other thread on this topic. (Is there a way of uniting two threads?)
What seems most likely to me is a combination of Cecil’s points (8) and (7), i.e. the original chip design used the longest possible ‘ones’ counter, and it was copied or imitated by other manufacturers.
In support of the latter, I observe that the 9-minute snooze period is found chiefly in either older or cheaper models (where the manufacturers would have spared the trouble of designing their own chips and/or re-evaluating the 9-minute dogma).
My GF’s alarm clock has a six minute snooze.
My theory on the delay is that it’s to avoid a round number. Not that I have a really good theory as to why this would be a desirable, but it would explain why five and ten are rare delays, but nine, seven, and six, are all fairly common.
Maybe having an even time promotes saying “Just another half hour” or something, where if the clock goes off after an aparently random (to a groggy person) time, you get up sooner… Dunno.
On the engineering end of it… With a mechanical clock, ten minutes would be, by far the easiest to use, as that would be both one full rotation of the ones, and one click of the tens.
With digital clocks, the issue of ‘almost’ doesn’t even come into it. You’d either pick a certain number of internal ticks (depending on the crystal you were using) or a convenient power of two (as was mentioned.) Inaccuracy wouldn’t be an issue, because the timer would be based on the same mechanism that keeps the overall clock time correct.
If this (non-ten minute snooze) was just in digital electronic (as opposed to the mechanical card-flipping type) alarm clocks, I’d assume it was because they were using a convenient power of two to save cpu space (which was a concern a while back…) Instead of having to compare a multibit number, the counter could be seperate, with one pin (16 for 32768) connected to the CPU interrupt line. In the days before throwing a general purpose CPU at things was practical, this sort of engineering decision would make sense.
But, supposedly (I’m assuming someone here with more clock experience would have said if it was just digital electronic clocks…) this occurs in many (most?) alarm clocks, and they can’t all be using the same methods, especially since some are/were mechanical.
But, clocks are an inherently accurate mechanism. I can’t really imagine the cheapest timepiece which would actually keep accurate time, being so shoddily made that the snooze timer length was only estimable to the nearest minute. I can’t think of how you could take a (fairly at least) accurate clock and manage to get an unpredictable (at manufacturing) interval out of it.
So, having (I believe) ruled out engineering issues, it comes down to a design issue. Is there a reason why it’s preferable to have a snooze alarm go off on ‘odd’ intervals?
Speaking of my GF’s snooze timer… Does anyone know if it’s legal to strangle a bedpartner for using one?
I mean, she has to get up around 7:30 or so, so she sets the alarm for 7:00 to gradually wake herself (heavy sleeper, will nap through anything) up. This results in my being awakened (I’m a light sleeper) every six minutes, and laying there for thirty seconds of buzzing until she groggily reaches over to smack snooze again.
It’s sort of like Chinese water torture, but using wasps instead of water.
And, did they license that buzzing sound from the telco? It sounds exactly (well, maybe a little higher pitched) like the ‘Off the Hook’ sounds.
All my alarm clocks with snooze buttons have had nine-minute cycles, so while in general my multiplication tables are shaky, Ive gotten really good at nine-times. “Lessee, I dont really have to get up til 7, so if I set it for 6:30 I can smack the thing four times before I roll out of bed.” For me, anyway, hitting the button is almost more satisfying than the “extra” sleep…gets those aggressions out… BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP “Shut UP!!!” whack snore
Early snooze alarms were on dial electric clocks, on which the alarm mechanism was about as simple as you can imagine – a disk with a hole in it and another disk with a single right-triangle tooth extending perpendicularly from it, one connected to to the hour hand and one to the alarm hand. The two disks were pressed together by a spring, but could not meet because of the tooth. When the alarm time came, the hour-hand disk would reach the point where the point of the tooth met the hole, and the mechanism would snap together, activating the alarm. If the alarm wasn’t turned off, the disks would slowly separate as the diagonal edge of the tooth met the other end of the hole.
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V
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The original snooze button was a purely mechanical extension to this -- unfortunately, I don't know how it worked, but I do remember that you had to press *hard* on the button, and it went *skrrnch!* as it twisted some internal doohickey.
The actual alarm was simple, too, being a simple iron strip placed close enough to the motor to buzz at 60 Hz.
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John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays."
-- Charles WilliamsPersonally, I don’t the snooze button – in fact I can’t guarantee my alarm clock has one – but I guess I was under the impression it was a 10 minute snooze.
Oddly, after reading this article, I noticed in a catalogue last night an ad for an alarm clock boasting of it’s “4-minute snooze feature.” What’s the point? To me, 9 minutes isn’t enough sleep time to worry about.
Guess I’ll just keep getting up then the alarm goes off the FIRST time…
Thanks JK for bringing back the memory of having a dial alarm clock, in college. No snooze feature on mine; I would wake up, reset the thing for 15 minutes later, and go back to sleep.
Just wanted you all to know that Cecil has now heard from everyone in the USA - and most other parts of the world - who has a clock with a seven minute snooze alarm as opposed to a nine minute snooze alarm clock.
Theory: 9 minutes is “the standard” because it helps you wake up by making your brain work. When you hit the snooze, you think, “How long until the blasted alarm goes off again?” If it were 10 minutes, virtually no brain power would be needed, and you’d fall right back to sleep, certain that your computation was correct. Ah, but NINE minutes gets the gray matter movin’!
Back in my college days, I had a well-used analog clock radio which, of course, never woke me up. The buzzer just wasn’t loud enough and the radio speaker was weak. Not being able to afford a new one (Hell, a six-pack was usually beyond my means in those days!), and being somewhat mechanically inclined, I did the natural thing and tore that baby apart! I found that the ‘radio’ alarm function was activated by a simple switch attached to the clock, which, when activated, would shoot 110 volts to the radio. With a few scraps of wire and a standard wall outlet, I converted the thing into a more general-purpose alarm, one that would shoot the juice to ANYTHING I plugged into the outlet. (This MAY have been one of those rare six-pack occasions…) I found that a saber-saw jumping across a hardwood floor at the crack of dawn would wake me, and everyone else in the house, and most of the neighbors.
BTW, every digital alarm I’ve ever owned had a 9-minute snooze span.
No matter where you go, there you are…
T
As for the question, “Why nine?” I strongly suspect that it has a lot to do with the relative simplicity of the microprocessors used in early digital alarms. The simplest – and therefore the least programming code-encumbered – approach to fashioning a “snooze” delay is obviously to base it on a single digit. As has been previously pointed out, only the ‘ones’ digit can be used to provide a consistent ‘snooze’ period. (Using the ‘tens’ digit would result in a period of anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes, and the ‘hours’ digits are clearly outside the definition of ‘snooze…’) And the maximum time span achievable is thus… 9 minutes! This is also quite simple to program: X=X-1, period.
Also, didn’t a previous post imply that mechanical clocks operate independently of line frequency? Every ‘plug-in’ electric clock I’ve ever dismembered contained an AC motor, and those are VERY MUCH dependent on line frequency for controlling their rotational speeds, and therefore for keeping accurate time. And before I get shot down, I’ll point out that most battery-powered clocks either use internally-timed microprocessors or use the battery merely to power a tiny motor that winds the spring of a mechanical clock mechanism.
No matter where you go, there you are…
T
This business about an alarm clock counting AC cycles ( PatGomes ) sounds insane. I’m not saying it isn’t true, at least in some cases, just nuts. You can buy a 555 digital timer ( a small chip ) for probably less than 5 bucks ( and less than that if you buy by the thousands ) or a host of other chips that will do the same thing, which have been around for eons ( by technology’s standards ) and are simple to configure. SO basing a digital ( DC pulses ) clock on an AC cycle seems like a kind of backwards way of doing things, especially for people who are constantly trying to turn a profit.
The newer clocks use electronics, but the electromechanical clocks that dominated the industry until the 70’s used AC synchronous motors which absolutely, positively were driven by the line frequency.
(Until the 60’s or so, the good ones also had a power-failure alert, a little magnetically-suspended flag that showed on the dial if the power had gone at any point.)
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
I feel the better question is why there exists a snooze alarm at all? As mentioned in the above posts, why don’t people just get up when they need to get up? Is that the right time to be making ‘life’ decisions?
alarm comes on, person thinks, “hmmm, I can skip working out today, I’ll work out extra tomorrow.” hits snooze alarm.
alarm comes on, “I’m still in my exercise skipping time, so I can sleep through a few more snoozes.” hits snooze alarm.
repeat above two times
alarm comes on, “I didn’t work out so I can skip a shower today.” hits snooze alarm.
alarm comes on, “I’ll grab something to eat at work.” hits snooze alarm.
Maybe the snooze alarm is the reason so many people in America are out of shape, they try to make time for exercise, but snooze through it.
I know it is sometimes pointless to put two ideas in one message, but it occurs to me that in these modern times you could buy a clock radio that has a custom snooze option where you could set the length of the snooze time to whatever you want it to be. (beyond that you could teach the clock about days and weekends and even daylight savings time, leap years, vacations…Heck, just make a device you could plug your pda into!)
And now for a funny story. There was a period of time in my life where I was going to school and working a night-shift. As I was always sleep deprived I would snooze for ever and miss classes. One time the power went out and my digital alarm clock didn’t have the 9-volt back up supply. My first solution was to purchase a mechanical wind up clock, man it was loud. The alarm went off at the correct time, but in my half-sleep snooze conditioned state I would turn it off and go bac to sleep. My final solution required two mechanical clocks with the alarms set fifteen minutes apart. The second clock was placed across the room so I would have to get out of bed to shut it off. It was kind of scary to get up and shut off the second alarm with no memory what so ever of the first alarm going off. After awhile I got to the point where the first alarm would wake me up. An interesting fact is that the mechanical clocks were very inaccurate. There was a little slider you could move to adjust if the clock was too fast or two slow, but I couldn’t get the clocks to be off by less than 5 minutes every 24 hours.
No matter where you go, you can probably get a coke there.
I’m one of those people who hits their snooze alarm several times. Why don’t I just set my alarm for later? Simple, it isn’t about the time, it’s about how I wake up. I go something like this.
[ul][li]6:00 - Alarm goes off; hit snooze without really registering and fall immediately back to sleep.[/li][li]6:09 - Alarm goes off; hit snooze, squint at clock to see what time it is, close eyes and doze again.[/li][li]6:18 - Alarm goes off; hit snooze, stretch, look around lie back half asleep.[/li][li]6:27 - Alarm goes off. Turn off alarm and get up.[/ul][/li]
If I just set the clock for 6:30 without the alarm I would turn it off and go back to sleep without really waking up. Some of us are slow to wake up in the mornings. Snooze alarms give us time to wake up and still get to where we need to be on time.
(Oh, my clock does have a 9 minute snooze; I know those times above quite well…)
“Drink your coffee! Remember, there are people sleeping in China.”
Dennis Matheson — dennis@mountaindiver.com
Hike, Dive, Ski, Climb — www.mountaindiver.com
Just a quick note…my digital clock-radio, which I bought only about four years ago, has a seven-minute snooze cycle. Go figure.