4.0425 Analog vs. Digital Watches (4/100)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 27 Aug 90 16:59:08 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0425. Monday, 27 Aug 1990.


(1) Date: Sat, 25 Aug 90 09:54:02 EDT (19 lines)
From: Ken Steele <KSTEELE@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: 4.0423 Watches

(2) Date: 25 Aug 90 14:46:00 EDT (28 lines)
From: "Mary Dee Harris" <mdharris@guvax.georgetown.edu>
Subject: Telling Time and Wearing Watches

(3) Date: Sat, 25 Aug 90 01:07 EDT (36 lines)
From: <HANSCHKA@HARTFORD>
Subject: digital watches and other time pieces

(4) Date: Thu, 23 Aug 90 20:21 PDT (17 lines)
From: Robert Kirsner (213)825-3955 <IDT1RSK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: watches

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 90 09:54:02 EDT
From: Ken Steele <KSTEELE@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: 4.0423 Watches (8/140)


I guess I was born a little too early -- I was the first kid on my block
to have a digital watch, in grade seven I think. (Remember those LED
wristwatches that you couldn't read outdoors?) Yet somehow I was never
totally comfortable with digital time -- I was constantly trying to
translate 17:53 to an analogue image in my mind. Ultimately my choice
of wristwatches has always been aesthetic, though, and I've compromised
to a Timex with a traditional analogue face but a small digital window,
which can function as day/date, alarm, stopwatch, etc. (But then
compromise is supposedly the Canadian way out of any problem, isn't it?)

By the way, how *do* you use a sliderule?

Ken Steele
University of Toronto
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: 25 Aug 90 14:46:00 EDT
From: "]" <mdharris@guvax.georgetown.edu>
Subject: Telling Time and Wearing Watches

I was quite surprised by the comment that someone had to teach his
teenager how to tell time. Since when do we wait that long? I taught
my son to tell time (on an analog clock) when he was 4 or 5. Am I to
assume that the current policy is to see what the schools fail to teach
and fill in for them, if we happen to notice? I don't remember who made
the comment so I can't hold it against a particular person, but it seems
to be a trend that I don't like.

Now, speaking of problems with watches. I had a student a few years ago
who could not wear a watch at all -- digital or analog -- because the
watch would quit running. The batteries would go dead in digital
watches and the mechanism would go haywire in analog. She was an
unusual person.

I used to have a watch that always ran 5 minutes slow. Within a couple
of hours after I set it, it would be 5 minutes slow, but never more than
that. (I had to set it when I forgot to wind it.) So I let it have its
way and generally left it at 5 minutes behind the time.

Mary Dee Harris
mdharris@guvax.georgetown.edu
mdharris@guvax.bitnet


(3) --------------------------------------------------------------39----
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 90 01:07 EDT
From: <HANSCHKA@HARTFORD>
Subject: digital watches and other time pieces


I wear a digital watch most of the time [see earlier posting (-: ]
[see, I can do smileys that way too. the literally Russina way;-)] I
wear it on my left hand because if I wear it on my right, all the wrong
buttons are forever getting hit by mistake. It's one of those big
Casios complete with calculator[rarely used], memos[highly useful],
phone #s, and stop watch. The face is a bit scratched up because it's
too darned big to wear on the inside of my wrist.(-8

But, outside of this handy-dandy timepiece, my dream watch is a Hamilton
Railway Special. That's a wind-up pocket watch. It has very large
numbers so that those whose arms have gotten too short [to read with]
can see the face.(-: They keep good time [as conductors' watches they
had to]and are pretty much kill-proof. My father has one that's about
sixty years old; it still runs fine.

The living room clock is a reproduction Regulator. Yes, you have to
wind it, Virginia. So not all the stuff in this house is digital. Oh
well. It chimes on the quarter hour, and you thought that hour watch
chimes were bad! Wrist chimes are not anything new; they're just
portable versions of the same old thing.

I know what someone meant about cheap watches. But the problems I have
are not with cheap digitals, but with cheap analogs. Actually, it's my
father's problem. He kills analogs. He can keep one running for about
two years, and then it dies dead. These are Timex watches, waterproof
ones. He tends to perspire quite a bit, and his perspiration eats the
watch. The watch, when munched sufficiently, goes dead. I don't know
what he would do to a digital; he won't wear one. This man still uses a
slide rule. But I'm the one who uses fountain pens.;^)
Ruth,
the rambling anachronistic southpaw
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------29----
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 90 20:21 PDT
From: Robert Kirsner (213)825-3955 <IDT1RSK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: watches

My defense against those who refuse to wear watches at all (digital or
analogue) is to suggest in classes that those who don't are marginally
retarded, are unable to tell time, and hence go around asking the rest
of us "HEY WHAT'S THE TIME, DUDE?" Of course now that digitals have
been around for awhile, there is a backswing to analogue watches. Al
Capp had it all figured out. In LI'L ABNER, once people had REAL shmoos,
they could easily be talked into thinking they needed plastic shmoos and
chocolate shmoos. But I haven't seen anyone wearing sundials yet.

On Surnames: Those familiar with the science fiction classic
film "The Day the Earth Stood Still" will recall that Klaatu,
who came from a society about 5000 years ahead of our's had no
surname.