Rethinking Time: Exploring Decimal, Binary, and Hexadecimal Clock Designs
Alternate Clock Designs and Time Systems
I question why we stick to the inconsistent 24-hour, 60-minute system when a decimal approach could simplify calculations. I designed alternative clocks using base 10, base 2, and base 16 systems to make time easier to read and convert. While some designs like the binary clock lack accuracy, others like the decimal clock offer a simplistic pleasure for daily use. I invite you to explore these unique time systems and even hack the code to create your own custom formats.
If you wonder why Americans don't understand the need for using the metric system then ask yourself why you use this inconsistent time measurement system.
- vunderba
Nice. Related, I also love exploring different ways to visualize time, so a few months back I came up with twelve variations arranged in the form of an actual clock that you can click through to see each one.
Each one presents a different type of visualization (from sand, where each falling grain represents a second to a 3D-modeled set of water wheels)
- ortusdux
My favorite retirement gift is a seven segment clock that points to the day of the week. It usually gets a laugh, followed up months later with an honest thank you and an anecdote about how it saved them from going to the bank on a Sunday or the like.
- zoratu
Kari Voutilainen created a new way to display analog time with his Vingt-8 ISO watch. It enables the minute hand to be opposite the hour hand when it's half-past, and aligned to the hour hand at the top of the hour. The location of the minutes rotate with the hours. From https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-voutilainen-vingt-8-is... the description says, "the minute hand makes 13 revolutions around the dial every 12 hours, meaning the top of each hour migrates over the course of each day."
Once you get the hang of it, it feels more intuitive than the traditional analog displays and has become my favorite way to display analog time.
- Retr0id
Related, my unix time clock ("base 256"): https://retr0.id/stuff/2038/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37532426
- goda90
One advantage of our 24 hours a day, 60 minutes an hour clock is that it's easy to divide up days and hours into various equal parts since 24 and 60 are highly composite numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_composite_number
- gecko
My favorite alt time is definitely the ancient way of doing things: there are twelve hours during the day, and twelve hours during the night. Yes, this means that the length of an hour at night is different from the length of an hour during the day (at least most of the year). This system is still used in some oddball places (like certain aspects of Jewish religious law, and possibly Islamic law as well for all I know), but, having written such a clock once, I did kind of like that you could get a feel for where you were in the year purely based on how fast the second hand was ticking during which half of the day.
- yoshuaw
My favorite base 10 clock is Neralie: http://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/time.html
> The Neralie clock has two groups of 3 digits, called the beat & the pulse. A beat contains 1000 pulses, and equivalent to 86.4 seconds. A day is 1000 beats, or a million pulses.
- andsoitis
There's also the ill-fated Swatch Internet Time, which was a decimal system that divided the day into 1,000 beats and no time zones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
They even sold physical watches with this design.