Remember all those WW2 commando epics, and right before the big mission they all synchronize their watches? Well, I dare you to do that in a digital world.
The machine era guys tried to make things easy to work. Watches were great. Assuming you wound it up and kept it attached to your wrist, it's a snap. Setting it is the easiest thing in the world. Find the approximate time. Pull the dial out and twist everything to the right time. Push in when Captain Mallory says "mark."
The BBC World Service even still has their tones for setting your watch at the top and bottom of every hour. "Bip,bip, bip, bip, bip, bip, BEEP" and push in the knob. You are on to the second.
There is, however, no way to do this in the digital era. Just among devices I have at hand:
- Entry into edit modes:
- Changing the time could be forward-only, or forward and backwards; it could go on its own speed (maybe with two speeds) or each increment is a button push; the whole time could be as one, or hours and minutes could each have their own buttons; most have key repeat, but how much and how fast?
But none of them have an explicit exit mode. They time out, eventually, sometime. When does the time entered take effect? It depends. And you can't tell. So there's no good way to set time to the second. This makes me sad.
