Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

When your faithful correspondent was a tyke one of the indications of moving from being a "baby" to being a "big boy" was the ability to tell time using an analog clock or watch. In those days there really was no such thing as an analog timepiece. A watch or a clock always hand the numerals 1 through 12 placed in a roughly circular fashion around the face and hand two or three hands to tell the hour, minute, and sometimes second of the day.
Telling time was a tricky thing for a kid; big hand, little hand, second hand were often confused. After all, an hour is bigger than a minute and a minute is bigger than a second, so the hour hand should be the longest hand (The second hand) the minute should be the middle length hand (the minute hand) and the shortest hand should be the second hand (the hour hand). But most kids got through it and learned that instinct, especially in measurement,was not always the best guide and that the resisting of instinct in favor of certain rules, whether man-made or God proclaimed, were, and are, the mark of a human.
This writer's first watch was awarded to him at the age of five. The watch was a Zorro watch. The face of the watch was black and the numerals and hands were white. Emblazoned just above the center of the face was the word "Zorro." Zorro was a popular children's television program starring Guy Williams at the time. And while yours, at the time of the receiving of the watch, was still a little shaky on the concept of time telling, he enjoyed wearing, winding and listening to the watch.
Upon graduation from high school, this writer was awarded a Gruen chronometer. which was a real prize. Four dials in one watch! It was used several times at the drag races to measure the speed of cars and was used in the Navy to estimate the distance of 5 inch guns being fired from nearby destroyers.
It was at this time that digital watches (first invented by Hughes Aircraft) became popular and it was assumed that the dreary display of numerals on an LED or LCD watch face would soon take over the the analog watch market. At first the digital watches were rather expensive, but new technology always starts out dear. The arguments for buying a digital watch were that the watches were more accurate than digital watches (whether spring driven or electric) and that they could (at least the LED watches) could be easily read in the dark.
At the time such watch companies as Timex (probably the maker of more watches than any other company in the world) and Seiko started tooling up to make digital watches and pretty much considered their analog watches as supply for a niche market. New companies such as Citizen and Casio popped up to make digital watches and seemed to fully expect that everyone would be walking around and telling time by looking at looking at their wrists and seeing LCD or LED numerals telling them that it was 12:35:54 instead of at an analog watch telling them that it was about twelve-thirty.
But guess what? The digital watch, as a wrist watch, pocket watch or even clock, lost out. Well, really it didn't lose out, but it took second place to the analog watch after a short period of supremacy. If one goes to a department store, jewelry store or watch store one will see that the vast majority of watches are of the analog type. Some of them are spring driven and others are electronically driven, but they have hands that point to numerals. Those digital watches that are offered are either very cheap (this writer has seen digital watches for as little as five dollars) or are specialty watches for sailors, runner or hikers. Or anal retentive geeks.
What happened to the great digital watch revolution? This writer posits that the reason is that digital watches are seen as cheap and that they are, in fact inhumanly ugly. Compare the the face of a Casio Yachtsman to a Movado or Rolex Submariner. Also, they represent nothing. They're displays are nothing more than bare numerals that really mean nothing outside the watch or clock. An analog watch, one the other hand, and in a sense, represents the rotation of the earth.
A wrist or pocket watch is a piece of jewelry as well as a time keeping device. The watch says something about the owner and most people are content to know the time of day within plus or minus five minutes and have no need to split seconds while they are driving to work.
This, to your faithful correspondent, shows the triumph of the common man. Despite the ubiquity of digital clocks in cars and on bank buildings, the average man and woman prefers an analog watch or clock to the geekness of digital display. It is a triumph of common sense over marketing, though one sees young people using the clocks on their cell phones instead of watches when one asks them the time of day despite the fact that they are wearing an analog wrist watch. But young people are foolish and are blinded by shiny things and one can only hope that they get some about time. Being within fifteen minutes of the correct time is good enough for most things.