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Comment by goosedragons | Hacker News Reader

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goosedragons·

Do Europeans just not have analog clocks or watches anymore?

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I also found the "European" remark a bit weird.

I'm American so I don't really know, do Europeans generally ignore how AM/PM works?

IIRC the Romans created the system, so I'd find it really weird if it had dissapeared from common usage around there.

Also, every single picture I've found of a clock tower from Europe seems to follow a 12-hour convention.

Even when it's midnight and the clock hands point to 12, it's just 0:00 in our heads. Of course when thinking an talking about time, sometimes the numbers 13 to 23 are replaced with their 1 to 11 counterparts and if it's ambiguous, a "in the morning", "in the afternoon", "in the evening" is added. But there's a clear distinction between "0" and "12". When someone says "12 o'clock", it's always 12 noon and never 12 midnight, since that would be "0 o'clock".

>Do Europeans just not have analog clocks or watches anymore?

Not in Britain we don't. Analog clocks were abolished by Henry VIII. Since then we kept time using sundials until digital watches were invented in the 1970's and Roger Moore wore one playing James Bond in 'The Spy Who Loved Me'.

We do but 12 is noon for us, otherwise past 11:59 in the evening it goes back to 0.

Do your analog clocks have all numbers from 0-23 in them?

No only a small number exists but most are still 12h analog clock.

Anyway that is not really the problem, we just learn from being kids that 12 is only valid for noon otherwise it is implicitely 0 as the next one is 1 anyway. And, at least in my country, we rarely say 12 as we use our words to say midnight/noon.

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