The manufacture of 24 hour analog clocks featuring a map of the world continues to this day. You can see more historical examples on the History page, and there’s more analysis on the Design page.
From MoCoLoCo, via The Map Room.
Dashboard widget
If you’re a Mac user you may have upgraded to Apple’s latest operating system revision, widely known as Tiger. Among the many nice features is the Dashboard, where you can keep little applications. Yet again, however, Apple has failed to include a 24 hour analog clock, offering us only the standard 12 hour clock with AM/PM indicators. But we’re not thwarted so easily:
More on the Software page.
Hummel watch
A finely finished and inexpensive quartz watch. Unusually, this company have chosen the noon at the top design:
Find this at mdmarketing.de, but you may need to translate the site from German if you’re not a deutschsprecher.
You can find this, and a definitive list of all true 24 hour analog watches, at André’s 24 hour watch site.
Venice clock
Here’s a good picture of a 24 hour analog clock in Venice.
Andy took this photo, and says:
…a clock just over the Rialto bridge. There is a flea market around you but if you turn and look up, there it is. Very strange as the hours don’t start/end where you would expect. I heard a strange story about this clock… I was told that the Venetians used to re-set the clock every day. When the sun rose, it was six o’clock. So at dawn, the clock was set to six. And that is where the clock sits now. It doesn’t run, or at least it wasn’t when I was there. Do you know if there is any truth to this?
Ryan’s clock
Ryan Provost emails:
I created a 24-hour analog clock this weekend. The clock also has a metric time dial (in 1/100 day), and a 40-hour dial (because there’s 400 gradients in a full circle, 100 grads per 1/4 circle). All I need is a clock mechanism kit, and a AA battery, and to set the time, and I’m gonna show it to everybody!
Looks like an nice design.
Day and Night
The Masterpiece Jour et Nuit is a clever design by Maurice Lacroix which uses a technique developed in the 18th century. The single hand carries moon and sun symbols, and goes round once a day. This makes for an elegant display, although it wouldn’t be popular with astronomical purists, being a good representation of the positions of the sun and moon only once a month, around the time of the full moon. There’s another example on the Design page of this site.
12 at the top
Those nice people at the AAA watch club have released a 24 hour watch with 12 at the top. There are some connoisseurs of the 24 hour analog dial who prefer the 12 at the top (it’s more often found at the bottom of the dial), but have found it difficult to find watches.
Look no further!
Elgin marvel
Claire writes to tell us about her new 24 hour watch, an Elgin dating from the 1940s.
She found it in a tiny watch repair shop in her town, after some time searching for a decent 24 hour analog watch.
Keep looking in those small watch and antique shops for collectable items like this!
Owners of Elgin watches are fortunate in being able to find out so much about the company’s history at Elgin watches.
Konfabulator
For my Mac I’ve created this 24 hour analog clock by adapting a cool 12 hour clock provided by the extremely cool Konfabulator.
The works of the clock consist of a short JavaScript program (Konfabulator provides a JavaScript engine to animate your creations). You can create a face for the clock using any graphics program – this was my first effort in Adobe Illustrator.
Swedish clocks
From Sweden, Sylvie emails to tell us about her work with 24 hour clocks:
In Sweden we have been developing new ways for people with development disorder to handle their everyday activities. A very difficult field is to handle time. Time is hard to get a grip on when you are not able to think abstract or have trouble making a plan in your mind. It’s too many thinking activites involved at the same time. In Sweden we have developed several technical aids and some methods to help simplify handling time issues. One of these are 24 hour clocks.Unfortunately we do not have home sites in English that describe our work with this.
The best site to get to know what we are dealing with is www.pajalaklockan.com/. You can click below the clock icon on Tidshjalpmedel. Now there is a menu where you will find the Swedish word dygnsklocka which means 24 clock.
There are three models right now. The first one was developed in the northern region of Sweden where it hardly ever gets dark in the summer time. This created lots of trouble for people with thinking difficulties. A man who worked at a daycare center developed it to help some of his mates. Now they are selling it. It’s called Pajalaklockan after the village. It has plastic bits for every half hour that you can put messages, symbols on, and they come in different colours making it possible to mark the working hours in different colours from freetime and sleeping time.
24hourtime.info 