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Comment by falcor84 | Hacker News Reader

On a sidenote, here's a controversial opinion - electrically-powered analog clocks are silly and we should discontinue making them.

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As someone with zero sense of time, analog clocks let me use my spatial reasoning to reason about time. I am much more aware of how much time I'm spending on something with an analog clock

You piqued my curiousity here - do you mean you would think to yourself something along the lines of "I have until the minute hand goes 60 degrees further than it is now" as opposed to "I have 10 more minutes"?

As someone who shares this perception, for me it's not nearly as analytical. I can physically see how much is left; I don't think in terms of the numbers. It's sort of like judging the distance between your workplace and the coffee shop down the street, in which if asked you'd make some heuristics to estimate how long it takes you to get there, but by default you just 'know' it is where it is, even if you don't think of the distance in meters.

So it's more like "I have <image of clock> left" because I intuitively know what the clock will look like when the time is up.

Pretty much what claudiawerner said in the sibling comment.

When I used to drink coffee, I took sugar in it. Sugar in diners often came in a dispenser[1]. I could tell when I had the right amount of sugar poured in from one of these even though it might clump on a humid day and pour freely on a dry day. With an analog watch, I can do this for time, but with a digital I cannot.

A digital watch requires much more conscious thought; if I log all my activities and make a spreadsheet &c. I can calculate a range of time it will take me for all my tasks, but with an analog watch I can just intuit it. To some personality types doing all of this seems to be enjoyable, but it's quite painful for me.

1: Like this: https://rapidswholesale.com/browne-halco-12-oz-sugar-pourer....

I would think think this is rather common for people with a strong spatial intuition. When planning a task in steps I mentally see where the hands on the clock will be at the start of each task.

I also have an image for the year in my head when long term planning. It is dynamic and I see it from “today” wherever that is, and I approach upcoming events. It is cyclic in years but there is a difference between looking back on January which was and looking forward to the next January.

AC clocks can sync their motors to the grid frequency, making it another perfectly valid mechanism of counting time. The grid frequency is very consistent.

The operators can even intentionally speed up or slow down the grid by small amounts to re-align the # of expected cycles over periods of time.

Some prior discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24602162

>The grid frequency is very consistent.

This is not true. It does change a bit under heavy load and the req. to keep it constant are far from perfect. There are timers that use the AC freq. but they are far from precise compared to a quartz crystal oscillator ones. A low effort [0] stackexchange search.

[0]: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/57878/how-pr...

It looks like they do compensation for fluctuations. If done property it could basically be as good as the clock on your phone and never need to be set.

I don't exactly keep up on these things, but at one time off-peak frequency compensation was done specifically to keep AC-synchronous clocks accurate. I wouldn't be surprised to find that's not really done anymore.

Analog clocks use much less power than digital clocks, by virtue of not having to continually emit light. That property may also be desirable for other reasons.

Pretty much - only LCD (no backlight/etc) can rival them.

In my opinion wall clocks that run on a battery are a lot better than any digital clocks perception wise. They are also super cheap to make nowadays. Recently I had to fix one by disassembling it, clear the plastic gears/cogs, and silicone spraying them. Nifty little machines. My only regret would be not having solar battery as a frame. That would extend its battery life immensely, adding a tiny LiFEO4 would make run for decades.

I can read an analog clock at a greater range than I can read a digital of the same size. Usually not that big a deal for me but without my glasses the difference is substantial.

When the power goes out, what happens to an “electrically-powered analog clock?”

That's a good point. Assuming physical dials, it'll still show the correct time twice a day, which is twice more than an unpowered digital clock ;)

Continues to run for years on a 1.5V primary C cell.

Graphs and charts are silly. You have CSV.

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