Keeping Time

A friend of mine has an antique digital clock which has only two buttons for its programming. He received it as a corporate gift, a token of gratitude for his services many long years ago, and just recently found the clock in a drawer. It is still working, but he is concerned that the time is off, as it is running twenty-nine minutes fast. This is not bad for a fifty-year-old clock, but in fooling around with the two buttons, he has discovered that it seems there is no way to reset the time to make it run accurately.

After doing some internet research on how to set a two-button travel alarm clock, and from my own recollections of the progression of technology involved in their production, I have made some observations.

The good news for my friend is, your clock is working, as designed.

The bad news: The alarm can be set, but the time cannot be changed.

When these digital alarm clocks were first designed, they were assumed to be so accurate that programmers "knew" they would never give the wrong time, and so their programming did not allow for a need to reset the time. Their logic was that, even if the clock gained or lost a second or two, it would never add up to an entire minute, at least not before the battery would run down, and the batteries in the first units were not replaceable. And they sincerely believed the technology was so good that such a clock would be likely to keep perfect time forever, or at least until the next generation of computer-controlled clocks replaced the old.

Each batch of clocks manufactured at the factory was pre-set to the correct time for a particular time zone. Then it was packaged and distributed accordingly, within each time zone.

After the first batch hit the market, all of a sudden, Daylight Savings Time threw in a monkey wrench.

However, people familiar with the new technology were so confident in the ability of computers to solve any problem, that they programmed the next batch of clocks to adjust automatically for Daylight Savings Time. Of course, they wrongly assumed that there would be no change to the overarching system in place for determining on which date the time changes would take place.

They also did not account for differences in time zones, where people take the clocks with them when traveling around the world. The next batch of clocks did include a method for setting the correct time, as well as the time for the alarm.

This type of digital clock became instantly obsolete with the advent of satellites and atomic clocks. The newer clocks used an electronic chip to read the exact time off the satellite which takes its time from the atomic clock used as the world's standard.

I recommended to my friend that he should keep his timepiece, as an object of memorabilia. It is small and so does not take up a lot of room on the desk. It is a relic which salutes the advent of the Information Age, and the confidence we once had, that all the problems of the world would be solved using a computer.

My friend's clock is simply oozing with giddy optimism! And, unfortunately, it simultaneously reeks with the crushing blow, that such a dream, of a world made perfect by man's harnessing of the computer to do its bidding, is not likely to materialize anytime soon.

If a nickname is needed for the objet d'art, I'd proffer "Reality Check, Please!"