Digital clocks are gimmicks. With the old ones – with the three hands, now referred to as “analog timepieces” – you had to look at the three hands and then do a lot of interpolation regarding their positions before you could look up and say, “It’s 4:47 and 32 seconds.” Now in the wondrous age of high technology, you can see 4:47:32 in real numbers with no interpolation necessary. Fantastic!

And it would be fantastic if people looked at their watches to find out exactly what time it was. But they don’t. They most often look at their watches to find out what time it isn’t. If I had to have supper in the oven at 5 p.m., 4:43:32 would mean that I had about 15 minutes to get home and I wouldn’t give a hoot about the 32 seconds. I’m not too sure that I would care whether it read 43, 44 or 46 minutes. I’d still have about 15 minutes to get there. My brain has been calibrated for years to 15-minute time intervals. Yours has been, also, whether you like it or not. When I see the digital read-out, my brain has to do a lot of unnecessary work to produce a picture showing the big hand on or near the nine. That’s all I care about. I’ll take the old one with the hands.

Merrill Hall 
Yarmouth