How many clocks are there in your home/dwelling?

[BobG]

They already do. My wall clock automatically synchronizes with the broadcast from the US Naval Observatory.

Since one of the offices I sometimes work in supports satellite ops, they felt they should really have an accurate wall clock and bought one of those. The problem is, the entire building has RF shielding so they have to carry it outside to let it reset itself. Needless to say, it didn't take long before they decided their clock didn't have to be that accurate after all (they have products that have to be done by the end of the day, they don't have to be delivered at some particular second).

 

[Moonbear]

I don't know - maybe. I gave up a long time ago. The scars on my arms and hands indicate that I'm probably too physical to wear jewelry and watches.

I'm not even that physical, and used to destroy watches all the time. I think my cell phone survives better because it's not anywhere near my hands, so is less prone to collisions with random things, or drowning as I reach into water for something, etc.

Our "thermostat" is me getting up in the middle of the night in the winter to either build or replenish a fire in the wood stove, so the house is comfortable when my wife gets up to go to work. She re-fuels the stove so it will be comfortable when I get up, and we keep our schedules staggered throughout the heating season. I'm a night-person so that works out great.

I don't have a husband to kick out of bed ahead of me to turn up the thermostat, so that's why I have the digital one that adjusts by itself.

Clock confessions:

When I was a child, the main clock on the sideboard was a posh affair, with a pendulum inside, and Westminster chimes every quarter-hour. One got used to it, but it relentlessly hurried the day along with those chimes. It left me not caring much for 'when' anything 'had' to happen (a bit like in Jamaica).

When at university, the bedside alarm clock, besides being radioactive, and having a cheesy rotating centre-star graphic, had a defect on the escapement such that it included a "clonk-clonk" every 14.5 ticks. It took weeks of feeling tired and ill before I realized I was not getting properly to sleep, being partly woken in that rhythm. Since flinging it into a wall had no effect, I took a matchstick, and stuck it through the balance wheel spokes.

Replaced with a constantly humming 'digital' thing that changed its white digits by flipping flaps, very like some rail station departure information boards, that got shown the 'off' switch. Finally - LED technology arrived. Then LCD.. ahh bliss. My family are convinced I have a few loose screws, but no tick-tick thing is tolerated long near me. I can get along fine now with my radio-controlled projection clock I got at the Science Museum gift shop. Its locked to the national atomic standard, and is entirely OK for anything scientific - and its quiet!

We used to have one of those flipping numbers digital clock things...fortunately, it was in the kitchen. But, since I used to have to sit at the kitchen table to do my homework, some days, it would drive me bonkers while everything else was quiet and I could hear the minutes ticking away while I was already feeling like my homework was taking forever to get done!

And, your story reminded me of the LOUDLY ticking wind-up alarm clock my grandparents used to have. When I visited, that's the clock they'd stick in the room I was sleeping in. Kept me up all night long listening to that ticking. When everything else is quiet, those sorts of noises are all it takes to keep me staring at the clock all night instead of sleeping. But, you definitely wouldn't sleep through that alarm either. The kind with a real bell in it...a LOUD one.

 

[moose]

In my dorm room, 2 laptops, 2 cell phones, 1 watch, 1 Ti-89 calculator...

 

[rhuthwaite]

We have 35 devices in our house that show the time
in the kitchen alone there are 5 (one on each oven, one on the microwave, one on the dishwasher, and one on the wall). Then we have 4 computers, 6 cell phones, way too many alarm clocks and some other things that display the time

 

[Astronuc]

I don't have a husband to kick out of bed ahead of me to turn up the thermostat, so that's why I have the digital one that adjusts by itself.

You should get one. Maybe they'll have a digital, self-adjustable one someday.

We analog models have all sorts of compatibility issues - like minds of our own.

 

[Integral]

I think there may be a uncountable number, not real sure and I am not going to take the time to count!

The ones that irk me are the niffty digitals that have a clock chip built in so they set themselves to the internal clock when you plug them in. They also know, or should I say KNEW, when Day light savings turned on and off. Now they think it is time to change, so I will have to manually reset them until DS really turns off.

Whose idea was it to change anyway?

Here's another one for you, why is it that the app that sets my computer clock to NIST standard is NOT the same time as my wall clock that sets itself to WWV? They used to be, but for the last 6 -8 months they have been different by over a minute.

 

[GTrax]

Here's another one for you, why is it that the app that sets my computer clock to NIST standard is NOT the same time as my wall clock that sets itself to WWV? They used to be, but for the last 6 -8 months they have been different by over a minute.

That is something you really should investigate! Your PC has its hardware clock, which will start to drift as the backup battery gets old. Then there is the software clock, which has an offset saved when you reset the time/date. Then you have apps which fetch server times, usually secondary standards. The best of them will fetch the time, adjusted for the server latency delays, and will calculate the PC clock drift. They apply a compensation that tracks the PC clock drift, keeping it correct between NIST-based updates.

Better than 1 second or so is good enough to predict a satellite coming above the horizon. Some internet operations require accuracy better than 200mS. I have seen a application called (Ish-Clock) which gives the time approximately, to within about 5 minutes or so, somewhat variable. Google finds this stuff.