Interactive clocks

Clocks are not very interactive nowadays. You simply look at them and they tell you what time it is. Before they were digital things, clocks were a bit more interactive. My parents have this old wooden mantel clock and every morning they pick up a special key, put it into the slot, and wind the mechanism up. Pretty nifty. It’s magical, it works without batteries. Old wrist watches used to work with wind up mechanisms as well. Every morning you would start the day with winding up a few clocks.

Rotary clocks

If you forgot to wind up your phone you could use another interactive clock to check the time. In the Netherlands you would pick up your old rotary phone, dial 002, and listen to a voice that would tell you that at the next tone, it is 9 hours, 52 minutes and 50 seconds. I made a few interactive rotary phones, and I’ve written about them before. So you should head over to that article and read all about them

Interactive typewriter clocks

My daughter asked me a while ago if I could turn a real, physical typewriter into a clock. I think it’s a fantastic idea, and maybe one day I will buy an old typewriter and turn it into a clock. Or more probably: fail while trying. I did make a few prototypes of how this typewriter clock could work though. Here’s a version where in order to see the time, you have to type. If you keep typing, the time keeps being typed. Here’s another one where you simply have to click. Which is really handy if you don’t have a keyboard. If you keep it running, and click on this clock every now and then, it turns into a log of how often you want to know what time it is.

Here’s a different version of this clicky typewriter clock which works better if you don’t need a log. I also made more stern versions of these two clicky clocks: they only type a new line when the time has changed. So compulsive clicking doesn’t work with these.

Interactive station clocks

Clicking on clocks to see the time seems like a simple way to make clocks interactive. Here’s a version of a station clock that I find particularly pleasant to use. In its default state all hands hang down, pointing at half past five, or half past six. When you click on it the hands bounce in their right position, and after ten seconds they hang down again. The hands have such a nice wobble!

Clicking is nice, but they are too easy. I wanted to make a digital clock that feels a bit more like winding up your mechanical watch. This idea turned into this scrolly clock. You have to scroll all the way down to see what time it is. If you have a browser that doesn’t support the newish scroll driven animation feature, it is a different version of the clicky station clock. Still interactive, less tiresome, still slow. New technology does not necessarily make things better.