24 hour

Forté ZULU-DUO Authentic Dual-Time Zone 24-Hour Watch

The new Forté ZULU-DUO is a real Dual-Time 24-Hour quartz watch from Forté.

Forté ZULU-DUO

The Red Triangle on the uni-directional rotating 24 hour bezel sets the second time zone. It’s 20 ATM water-resistant with a Swiss 24-Hour movement, scratch-resistant sapphire crystal and an inverse radial gradient dial (colour transitions from a black outer edge to a lighter center).

There are two styles (leather or stainless-steel band), of which there are three versions each, for a total of six models. Each style is available with 00, 12, or 24 at the top.

Forté ZULU-DUO leather strap

The numeric hour indicators are large and mark every other hour. The red circular hour indicators count the other hours.

Forté ZULU-DUO leather straps

Forté ZULU-DUO leather straps

Both numeric and circular hour indicators glow in the dark.

Forté ZULU-DUO glowing in the dark

Forté ZULU-DUO in presentation box

This real dual-time 24 Hour watch where both Time Zones are shown in 24 Hour format is a AAA Watch Club exclusive. Visit this page for additional info. There is a special 20% pre-order discount available for a limited time.

Svalbard watches latest models

The latest set of 24-hour watches from the industrious folks at Svalbard
have just been released, and are now available from their web site.
These are all limited edition (500) productions:

Svalbard 2026 750x750px

1st row: Icy GA33, Tundra GH27†, Solstrale GH26†

2nd row: Aurora AA42B, Antikken AA60, Midway AA59

3rd row: Bells GA32, Defender GA47, Horizon GA46

†models GH27 and GH26 are automatic, made with Seiko NH34A movement

Three new interesting 24-hour models will be released in about the middle of
November: HX24B and HX25B, which are 24-hour double retrograde watches, and HX19, which
is a 24-hour single hand watch with jump minutes.

Visit Svalbard Watches for information and purchases.
You can use the code 24HOURTIME24 to obtain a discount.

Merivian

The Merivian Company introduces its new watch:

The First Circadian Chronograph: Merivian is the first watch that aligns time with your circadian (daily) rhythm.

Merivian is the only watch where the middle of your day is truly in the middle of the watch. Because, honestly, 12 o’clock isn’t anyone’s real midpoint. Our daily rhythms are personal, so the way time is represented should be too.

Forte LImited Edition Watch on Kickstarter

The AAA Watch Club have been making 24 hour watches (and featuring on this site!) for nearly 20 years. Now you can join in the excitement of a Kickstarter project with an opportunity to obtain their latest offering: the Forte Limited Edition ALPHA SX Series Safety-Inspired 24 Hour Watch:

24hralpha00sx left side

now water resistant to 20 ATM and with anti-glare Sapphire Glass.

The Kickstarter campaign is about to launch! Visit this link to see the home page, where you can arrange to be notified when the Kickstarter Project Page goes live.

You can find their existing range of watches at aaawatchclub.com.

The sun clock

The sunclock.net web page shows a 24 hour clock together with information about the sun for your location.

sunclock

The colors show the golden hours, plus the three types of twilight you’ll encounter – Civil, Nautical, and Astronomical.

An unusual feature is that it can show the time counterclockwise (anticlockwise). About the only feature missing is – ironically – support for Dark Mode.

Pical – iPhone 24 hour calendar plannning

Pical is an iPhone app that uses the 24 hour dial to help you plan your calendar.

Timezones 2048x2048

From the app’s description:

A visual calendar to help focus your day. Calendar events are displayed on a 24h clock dial, representing the entire day. Easily keep track of upcoming events with a time-remaining countdown display in the center of the dial.

Two calendar groups: The dial is split into two rings, so you can prioritize some calendars over others. For example, use the outer one for your own, and the inner one for your family members’ or colleagues’ schedules. Or just keep your work calendar and personal calendar separate.

Visualize time zones: Tap on the current time to pull up a visual display of customized time zones. Easily see what time of day it is for international friends and colleagues.

See when you’re free on any day of the month: A 24h dial is neatly split into four parts: morning, afternoon, evening, and night. In month view, you can see not only on which days you have appointments, but whether you’re free in the morning, or for lunch, or for dinner, on any particular day.

See where new events fit: When you add or edit an event, you’ll be shown when your other events are, so you can plan around them. Set appointment length instantly with our time slider.

A widget you won’t be able to live without: See your entire day on your home page, as soon as you unlock your phone, and how much time you have till your next event. Indispensable information, right at hand.

Link to the US App store

Dayview 2048x2048

As you can see from the screen shots, the execution of this concept is excellent throughout the application.

EventDuration

One interesting thing about this app is that it’s specifically targeted to ADHD sufferers – the app’s full name on the App Store is “PiCal – ADHD Clock + Calendar”. There are a couple of posts on this blog that highlight the utility of the simpler 24 hour design:

I do wonder whether this specific targeting to ADHD, good though it is, may deter others from benefiting from the improved usability of the 24 hour dial. I hope not.

One point to note: the app appears to be a subscription-only app: free to download, and then $3.49 per month, or $25 per year.

Visit Pical for more information.

World Time linear clock – London Piccadilly Circus tube station

On TV recently, an episode of Secrets of the London Underground looked at Picadilly Circus station, and there was a brief and rare glimpse of the unique World Time Today Linear Clock. This was built in about 1923-1925, designed by the architect Charles Holden, who also designed the rest of Picadilly Circus station and other London tube stations.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

The title at the bottom left is “The World, on Mercator’s projection”.
There are a few lights indicating some major cities.

Here are some pictures of the display and inner mechanism.

The time is displayed by a scrolling band with the Roman numbers from “0” to “XII” repeated once. It shows both GMT and Daylight Savings Time (Summer Time). The band scrolls left (west) at the same speed as the earth rotates.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

It probably gives a reasonably indication of the current times in various parts of the world, although, if you look at this much more detailed map of time zones from the wikipedia:

World Time Zones Map

the simple linearity obviously isn’t going to be very accurate.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

The numbers are shown in reverse for a few hours of the night, around midnight.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

I suspect that the band has to be at least twice as long as the width of the map, so that it can run around both in front of and behind the map. The band looks quite long in these pictures.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

Picadilly Circus World Clock

Picadilly Circus World Clock

Picadilly Circus World Clock

Here’s a moody photograph of Charles Holden:

Charles Holden

Holden sometimes used the pseudonym “The Owl”, because of his habit of working on his designs at night, sometimes until 3 or 4 o’clock. He was said to be a good craftsman and “good with his hands”, so I expect he played a large part in the design and manufacture of this clock, possibly in collaboration with building firm John Mowlem Ltd, with whom he worked on the development of Picadilly Circus station.

(The “Secrets of the London Underground” series was made by UKTV, which is owned by the BBC. I don’t know how you can watch this if you’re not in the UK.)

Forté watches

The fine people at the AAA Watch Club have released new versions of the Forté ALPHA Series of 24 Hour watches, with the big 43mm case.

24hralpha12s2 right side lay az

We’ve redesigned the watch face with bigger, brighter
numbers that are Superluminous. Specifically, every other
of the orange numbers is 20% bigger. Plus, all 24 hour
numbers are now Superluminous so that they glow brighter
and maintain their glow longer in dark lighting conditions.

And since the orange numbers are now a brighter orange they
are even easier to read during the day when they do not
glow and at night when they do!

At night, you’ll see the dials like this:

24hralpha24s2 super luminous dial az

You can choose to have 12, 00, or 24 at the top of the dial:

three forte watches

To find out more, visit the AAA Watch Club.

The Circa app and watching the Apple Watch

At their recent WorldWide Developers Conference, Apple again showed that they quite like the 24 hour watch face. Again, though, they’re not 100% convinced that the world is ready to tell the time on a 24-hour dial. This is as close as they’re going to get, this year at least:

Wwdc apple solar

It’s their new “solar face”, showing the position of the sun in the sky, (like a good old-fashioned medieval astronomical clock). They’ve also kept a 12-hour dial just to help you switch over to the 24 hour dial.

They already use the less error-prone design on current watches for selecting alarm times (when it’s important not to confuse 12am with 12pm:

IMG 0722

But if you want a more modern display suitable for your modern lifestyle, there’s a new iOS app that brings the 24 hour dial to your phone and your wrist. The app is called Circa, and it’s very well done.

Here’s the iPhone app:

Circa phone face

The coloured rings are the “office hours” for the time zone: you can change the names and hours for each one. You can add more cities easily. Notice the short white bars around the edge: these are the appointments taken automatically from your Calendar (if you give permission, of course!). The developer lives in Kiev, I think!

You can touch and move the single hour hand around, to find exact conversions between local and other time zones. You can also create new calendar events.

The Apple Watch app installs automatically when you install the iPhone app, and it’s more or less equivalent in functionality.

Circa watch face

It also lets you move the hour hand around (with your finger or using the digital crown) to see equivalent times in other zones. You can also add Circa as a complication on the other Apple watch faces.

The developer of Circa is Kostiantyn Zuiev.

(See also an earlier post looking at Alex Komarov’s development of an iPhone app.)