Somebody never had a clock with roman numerals and it shows
I remember getting into an argument with a grade school teacher over IIII because most such clocks put that for 4 instead of IV because of some fuckin reason
Weird, I’ve seen many analog clocks with Roman numerals but always IV for 4.
False. I had a clock that used IIII instead.
Your clock having it doesn’t change that mine didn’t.
It’s actually called the “clockmakers four” or “watchmakers four.” it’s a thing.
Yeah I looked it up and saw it is a thing, and it’s interesting. I wonder if the clock I’m thinking of was just a really cheap one that was labeled as you’d expect based on Roman numerals or whether some just didn’t follow it.
To be fair, Google searching Roman numerals clocks give you about a 50/50 distribution.
I wasn’t aware of this either and I suspect we’re not alone. It’s not highly noticeable and if there’s a 50-50 chance won’t even see it…
I despise these so so much. IIII was historically NEVER correct. Some doofus decided to put that on a clock because it looks more symmetrical with the VIII on the other side. Terrible reasoning.
“However, even though it is now widely accepted that 4 must be written IV, the original and most ancient pattern for Roman numerals wasn’t the same as what we know today. Earliest models did, in fact, use VIIII for 9 (instead of IX) and IIII for 4 (instead of IV). However, these two numerals proved problematic, they were easily confused with III and VIII. Instead of the original additive notation, the Roman numeral system changed to the more familiar subtractive notation. However, this was well after the fall of the Roman Empire.”
https://monochrome-watches.com/why-do-clocks-and-watches-use-roman-numeral-iiii-instead-of-iv/
IIII was the way Romans usually wrote 4. It’s associated with simplicity / illiteracy. But also depended on era, region, intended audience, or practicality. I think the most famous example is the coliseum using LIIII.
There’s still variation even now; standardization is relatively new, and it’s not common knowledge. And dates… it’s like every 50-100 years people decided to write them differently.
I say we divide the day into 100 sections. No reason really I just think it’d be cool to party until 100 o’clock.
You might like reading about decimal time…
The day in 15 increments is close, so that would be better in some ways… But we can’t seem to all agree on the monstrosity of stupid that is daylight savings so I fear implementing logic would never happen.
Maybe go SI with day as base unit & SI prefixes? Eg, deciday, centiday, milliday.
Hour hand -> hour = n
Minute hand -> minute = n * 5
It makes sense, there’s just an algorithm attached to each pointer.Hour -> 3 = 3
Minute -> 3 = 3 * 5 = 15The first clocks didn’t have a minute hand though.
Days start at 0h, not 12h
It can’t start at 12 hours if there are 24 segments.
And keep your letters out of it too.
The AM/PM bullshit:
AM: 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Then the same for PM. Who counts like that? Whats after 12? 1! What?
People who lived before the invention of zero counted like that!
I have no idea if that’s true but I believe it
The idea of zero being a number rather than the absence of a number took a very long time to settle on. There’s a whole history book on the topic!
I listened to an audiobook about the history of zero years ago (can’t remember the name, might be that one). I thought it would be dull enough to fall asleep to.
It was not.
The galaxy-brained group known as “Z12 + 1”. “What if we did modular arithmetic but one-indexed.”
Edit: Actually, wait, it’s worse: zero-indexing but we represent the zero element in Zn as ‘n’. Kill it with fire.
Is not 12+12Z the exact same coset as 0+12Z? Is 12 not the identity element? Must group theory follow computer science conventions?
What clocks do you have that day 0, except for the 0 in 10?
Digital ones.
… what digital clock goes clockwise?
European ones
Fair enough
Well I can tell you that mine definitely doesn’t go anti-clockwise
Mine just goes south
Days start at 0h, not 12h
Show me where is the zero here?
I have a clock that has 0 at the bottom, 6 in the 9 position, 12 at the top, and 18 in the 3 position.
I present to you… the binary clock
German has a word for it: historisch gewachsen
It’s the same logic that was used by ancient astronomers to arrive at 360 degrees for a full revolution.
The math is easier if you have to do it by hand.
You’ve gone 360 on me.
These are called “superior highly composite numbers” apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_number
It’s also the one advantage Imperial has over metric. It’s easier to do mental math in a lot of cases in base 12 rather than base 10.
Now excuse me while I bar my windows and doors from the mobs of angry people that show every time I point this out.
Let me jump in until the mobs show up. “Noooooo, it’s just what you’re used to lalala. When is dividing by thirds ever useful, anyway?”.
I’ve also found that if you make this point without any reference to metric vs imperial, people tend to accept it.
That’s a good tip. I’ll keep that in mind next time this topic comes up.
Only really counts for feet and inches. But yes, having your base unit be divisible by halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, and twelths with whole numbers of sub units is highly useful when fabricating objects when you don’t have access to modern tooling and supplies. In fact I would argue base 12 is the superior numerical system that was abandoned for metric and we have lost something in the meantime. Though Jan Misali might disagree with his love for sexinal.
Imperial units do have another advantage to this day, though. When talking about machining bolts and threads Imperial use threads per inch or threads per unit length while metric uses the pitch of the thread, so mm in-between threads. This decision means that when machining imperial nuts and bolts we by default pick whole numbers of threads per inch which due to the circular nature of lathes means that a simple clock dial can keep the lead screw synchronised with the head. Since metric uses pitch we pick numbers like 1.25mm pitch which does not always synchronous well with the lead screw and head and requires some odd gear ratios to cut specific threads.
True, but why does volume/length/weight have to be separated? I honestly wouldn’t mind a base 12 system if they were connected logically.
I should have been more precise, I was really just talking about length measurements and less so on the holy fuckshit of everything else. I, too, would be super on board with a base 12 measurement system…
If we invent it we can have 3 competing standards!
If the day started at 1:00 then by the second hour you would be at 2:00, even though only 1 hour has passed. Effectively the day starts at 0. In fact in 24-hour time that is how it’s depicted, 00:00 with midday being depicted as 12:00, so it isn’t confusing
Careful, there are Americans around
Which is also why I hate that our calendar starts at year 1.
If the day started at 1:00 then by the second hour you would be at 2:00, even though only 1 hour has passed.
When the second day of the month starts, the day of the month is 2, even though only 1 day has passed.
I mean, numerically it does make sense to start at zero but it doesn’t seem to correspond to the way people think and talk.
Feel free to take it up with the Romans. It’s their stupid calendar system.
I also take issue with there being 7 days in a week rather than 10, it’s just messy.
In the roman empire the day/night cycle was divided into 24 segments. 12 for the day and 12 for the night which also meant a day hour in summer was longer than the night hour.
As a programmer I’d rather it start at 0
Yeah but now you can’t enjoy the delights of python
Relatively funny but gets worse the more you think about it.
The 6 stands for 6, not 30.
When we have AM and PM it would be dumb to have 1-24.
1 is the end of the 1st hour. 2 the end of the second. This is why it starts at 0.
0
She’s a witch!
Only if she weighs as much as a duck.
She turned me into a naught!
*newt btw.
Yes, that was the intended play on words.
“At least we’re not mixing in letters”
I see
IIIIin there and I cry a little on the inside.This has become a standard on analog clocks and watches (presumably to avoid confusion with VI), but for some reason IX and XI (for 9 and 11 respectively) is fine.
Personally I’d like to see IX and IIIIIIIIIII.
ETA: I guess IX and XI are ‘fine’ because they’re not upside down, but my point still stands.
sub.wetshaving.social?
What is this?
My guess is there are only so many conversations you can have over whether a Silvertip Badger is superior to a Boar brush.
But there’s a million razorblades people can argue about. Platinum, tool steel, carbon. And then there’s which holder is the best. And then all the straight razor refinishing/refirbishing you could get into. Not to mention, strops, towels, soaps, sebum oils, styptics and on and on.
You’d be surprised
Also why clockwise?
Earth rotates and orbits counter clockwise. It just seems more right
Well, depending on which hemisphere you’re standing in, at least. We arbitrarily set this idea that north = up in most depictions of the globe, but we could just as easily make Antarctica the top of the world and everything rotates the other way.
The reason why clockwise is what it is, is because sundials were first used to tell time in the northern hemisphere, where the shadows move clockwise. If it was in the southern hemisphere, they’d have moved counterclockwise (which would be clockwise).
Before the age of exploration, orientation of maps were random. North became the norm so Europe could be placed at the top center.
Because Sundials rotate clockwise ( in north hemisphere )
To be fair whichever direction they made it go would be clockwise
True, but also it’s because of sundials
Also why clockwise?
We read from left-to-right, so the front span of numbers continues that visual pattern.
No we do not all read left to right. Countless languages are written right to left or even vertically.
And there are a rare few instances of writing systems that alternate left-to-right and right-to-left on each line
I know a language which kinda-sorta has two writing systems, one of which is left-to-right, the other one right-to-left.
Which one?
I don’t know which one HK65 is referring to, but I know a few examples:
- Punjabi, which is left-to-right in India and right-to-left in Pakistan (the Indian one being influenced by older Indian scripts and the Pakistani one by Arabic)
- Kazakh uses the RtL Arabic script in the part of China where there are a lot of Kazakhs and the LtR Cyrillic script in Kazakhstan
- At least some of the kinds of Tamazight (spoken by Amazigh people, mostly in Morocco and Algeria) use Arabic script, but there is a script specifically for Tamazight languages called Tifinagh which goes left to right and there’s also some use of the Latin alphabet for these languages
Now that I think about it: Yiddish is traditionally written in Hebrew script but also in Latin. I don’t know if the Latin is “just” a transliteration but I think both are standardized (which wouldn’t mean it’s not a transliteration)
Hungarian
Granted, the right-to-left thing is not used anymore outside of enthusiast circles, and is kind of an anachronism and part of a movement to revive it as part of national heritage. That said, you can find a whole bunch of town limit marker signs in both scripts around the country.
The Hungarians settled the Carpathian Basin in 895. After the establishment of the Christian Hungarian kingdom, the old writing system was partly forced out of use during the rule of King Stephen, and the Latin alphabet was adopted. However, among some professions (e.g. shepherds who used a “rovás-stick” to officially track the number of animals) and in Transylvania, the script has remained in use by the Székely Magyars, giving its Hungarian name (székely) rovásírás. The writing could also be found in churches, such as that in the commune of Atid.
From Wikipedia
The answer is ‘sundials’
We?
Well that depends on where you look at the earth from doesn’t it. It’s like saying ‘righty righty, lefty loosey’ which only holds true as long as you’re thinking about the top edge of the screw head.
Earth rotates and orbits counter clockwise.
No it doesn’t. It depends on the human perception of “up” and “down” which are completely arbitrary. We by convention see the North Pole as the “top” of the world but it could as easily be seen as Antarctica.
I’ll be there at H:00.
At least our hours are the same length regardless of latitude now, so let’s be grateful for that.
Don’t listen to OP’s bullshit.
They work for big clock. They’re trying to convince you 12 hour clock is useless so they can sell you double the clock.
Look at this guy, only one clock. I keep two analog clocks in each room, the AM 12-11, and PM 12-11. The way it was meant to be.
Well it’s because noon means nine because the day starts at six o’ clock, so three is noon, but we use it to mean twelve which is closer to midday, obviously
