Talk:24-hour analog dial

Proposed move

See Talk:24 hour watch#Proposed move. --Quuxplusone 02:24, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Moved --Stemonitis 07:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

What happens to the second/minute hand?

I came on here looking for what the second hand and minute hand do on a 24 hour clock/watch, but the information isn't here. Do they go round once per minute/hour on once every two minutes/hours? i.e. Does each interval still represent 5 seconds/minutes or does it now represent 2.5 seconds/minutes? (62.172.72.131 (talk) 16:48, 13 March 2009 (UTC))

Most old 24-hour clocks such as the Venetian tower clocks or the Prague Astronomical Clock (and, in fact, just about any astrolabe-style astronomical clock, apart from a very unusual one by Thomas Tompion) do not have a minute hand; they certainly do not have a second hand.

The usual convention on 24-hour clocks is to keep the minute hand to one full revolution per hour – i.e. an hour's interval will represent 2.5 minutes. This is the system used on the Shepherd Gate clock at Greenwich, and all of the clocks photographed which have minute hands. It is unusual for seconds to be represented on a 24-hour dial (if seconds are shown, they will tend to be in a subsidiary dial, as is the case on the clock at Greenwich), but the same principle generally holds (as is the case on the Vostok watch photographed). I have also seen some 24-hour clocks on which the minute hand completes a revolution in two hours (i.e. an hour represents a five-minute interval). Either way, if a minute-hand is used it should be immediately obvious from the 0-60 markings which system is being used. Because the 24-hour dial has no established convention for a minute hand and people are unused to reading them, great care has always been taken to include 0-60 markings, on dials as diverse as the Wells Cathedral clock and the Vostok watch (but not on the blue Swatch photographed – appalling design).

Perhaps the most innovative solution to the issue is the one used by John Harrison for his H1 chronometer (although it's not strictly necessary as the hands are all in separate dials anyway): he used double-ended hands. For example, the hour dial is marked I to XII twice, with the hour hand completing a full revolution once in 24 hours, and at any given time the hand would point to the relevant number both ways. Similarly the seconds and minutes dial are marked 0 to 60 twice, completing a full revolution in two minutes or two hours, with hands pointing to the relevant number at both ends. BartBassist (talk) 23:47, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:24-hour analog dial/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

The second quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four is incorrect. It should read "The clock’s hands said seven-twenty: it was nineteen-twenty really."

Last edited at 08:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 19:43, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

chinese traditional time

Could sb. please reword the paragraph? It is not even grammatical at some points. Thanks in advance. Backinstadiums (talk) 18:07, 7 January 2017 (UTC)