Clockspeddler Blog

For my entire life I have often pondered the greatest questions that mankind struggles with on a day-to-day basis.  What is life?  What is a soul?  What was the universe like before the Big Bang?  Where are all the tubes with clocks in them?

Not sure about the last one?

Me either, but apparently that struck someone as a profoundly good idea at some point because tube desk clocks exist.  What do they do, exactly?  They tell you the time, inside a clear acrylic tube.  Yep… that’s it.  I’m not sure what need or demand these tube clocks are supposed to be fulfilling, but I definitely have neither a need nor a demand for one.  When the designer of this came up with it, was he a child playing with some paper towel tube wondering what he can put inside one?  Maybe this creation is his lifelong dream, achieved at last!

As we all know, round objects with no flat surfaces go great on table tops and desk tops, too!

I’m also in the dark about the use a digital LED clock and flashlight combo really has.  It doesn’t look like the LED itself lights up, so you’re not going to be keeping the clock anywhere you’re going to be in the dark.  And if you just hold onto it for flashlight purposes, wherever you use the flashlight is going to be too dark to read the display anyway.

These two “clocks” are some great examples of what happens when someone wants to try to create a niche marketing in an already small niche.  There’s just not a lot you can do with clocks other than trying to make them look cooler than the million other clocks out there.  Until you can make a television in a clock…

You know what?  I call dibs!  This is an officially trademarked idea, plasma TV clocks for your desk.  Any of you try ripping me off and I’ve got a team of imaginary lawyers gunning right for you!

….

On an unrelated note, while these LED clocks are pretty cool in functionality there’s just something about the picture.  If you don’t get what I mean, I’m not going to explain it to you.

Desk clocks are another great promotional tool.  Really, any useful item that will end up on someone’s desk is going to count as a good item for promotion and a clock is probably as useful as they come!  Desk clocks can come in many different shapes and sizes and can be either digital or analog.

The digital kind of desk clock is what I see more often than not.  A lot of them do more than just tell the time, as well.  You’ve got some that have alarms, and some with calendars built in.  The computerized nature of most digital clocks allows companies to add all kinds of extra functionality and it also allows them to keep the clocks small.

There are some analog desktop clocks, though.  They’re usually higher quality and will even come as part of desktop sets that have other fancy stuff on them like quality pens and notepads, or even paper day planners and calendars.  There’s lots of ways to make these already useful things even more useful, and you’ll find just about any kind of combination you can think of if you look hard enough.

So digital and analog are pretty clear cut, but what forms do these two different clock designs take?  One is the wall clock.  We’ve probably all got at least one of these in a room of our home somewhere.  My experience has been that they’re almost always an analog style, too, with a clock face of numbers or roman numerals and a set of hands that point at the appropriate ones.  I like the roman numeral style clocks, they feel more stylish.

Wall clocks are also pretty simple to put together on your own, since you make them pretty much by finding any circular surface, drilling a hole in it, and then putting the clock mechanism on the back while you shove the hands on the front.  This ease in customization and assembly makes them quite inexpensive compared to digital clocks, so imprinted wall clocks are great promotional items!  You can get one as simple as a logo slapped on part of the face or an entirely custom clock face with full color graphics.  Since everyone could use a clock, they’re an item that’s guaranteed to see some use and get some face time.

Digital clocks and watches are great and seem to be cheaper and thus easier to replace than other kinds of clocks, but sometimes it’s good to go with the old standard.  Analog clocks are the clocks with faces, that have the familiar “tick-tock” and three hands to tell you the time.  Unlike digital clocks, which are electronic, an analog clock has gears and is almost entirely mechanical.

I’ve got an old grandfather clock I inherited from when I was a kid.  Like all grandfather clocks mine is an analog clock, with the long pendulum swinging on the bottom to keep the gears moving.  There are also weights involved and winding.  Some analog clocks are powered by batteries, but this doesn’t make a clock or a watch digital.  If there’s still hands on a clock face being moved around by gears, it’s an analog clock.  In the case of clocks that run on batteries, there’s usually a quartz crystal keeping him instead of a pendulum.

Clocks rock my socks off.  I don’t think there’s a single house that doesn’t have one in it, and I know I’ve got a clock in every single room of my house.  I just like to keep track of time, and am kind of a stickler for schedules.

Clocks come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, so let’s take a look at a few so we can be clear on what we’re talking about here.  Custom Digital clocks, for example, are clocks that don’t necessarily have hands that go around a clock face but actually display numbers for the hour and minutes.  Some will even display seconds, and some even try to imitate more old fashioned clocks.  They’re always battery powered and electronic… I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen one that was wound up and ran because of springs and pulleys. 

Some people also refer to clocks as timepieces, but I don’t think I’ve ever called a clock one.  When someone uses that word I always think of watches, the old wind-up kinds people with monocles and top hats carried around in a pocket.