Clock That Runs "Backwards"

Ans 2. Ritey-titey, leftie-loosie?

Good one.

In the Northern Hemisphere.

...which varies with latitude, of course.

Or earthwise/counterearthwise (from the South Pole perspective).

And which 'wise' does a digital clock run?

We are talking "B.C." here: Before Copernicus, also "B.G.": Before Galileo.

If the earth "is" viewed as center of universe, and unmovable, where does one get the idea (a non-Luddite) that the earth spins "earthwise"?

Old clocks: Sand glasses, candles, dripping vessels, sun dials. Then came Greek machines, and somewhere along the way, pendulums and gears made a clockwork work like a clock. I suppose the minute and hour hands have to begin moving from 12 to the right, or the clock would be "sinister", and who wants time to be "sinister?"

Digital clocks run period, you are just looking at a counter. How do they run on an oscilloscope (left to right?). I suppose one could say a digital clock runs bit-wise.

Exactly, and when dial-face clocks were invented⁽¹⁾, they were designed to mimic the sundials and move in a sunwise direction as well.

Notes:

1. Candle clocks, water clocks, and the like may have preceded actual sundials, but the first gear-driven, dial-faced mechanical clocks were definitely made to mimic sundials, for ease of reading (everyone knew how to read a sundial back then, copying its 'user interface' insured easy adoption and acceptance by the masses.)
   

I had never heard that word before, widdershins. Does remind of German auf wiedersehen, although completely different meanings. Maybe it originally meant, "until we come around again", as in around the dial?

I think you have an anti-clock. Do not let it get near a regular clock or they will totally annihilate each other.

"Wait a minute! Doc! You mean this sucker is nuclear?" _{- with apologies to "Marty McFly", "Back to the Future", 1985.}

You defined it yourself: backwards running clock-wise or backwards running counter clock-wise...

I've seen these in bars. You only notice them when you first get there!

Did they get you a backwards compass as well?

Now, I didn't know this. From the Wiki article about 'Clockwise':
Occasionally, clocks whose hands revolve counterclockwise are nowadays sold as a novelty. Historically, some Jewish clocks were built that way, for example in some synagogue towers in Europe, to accord with right-to-left reading in the Hebrew language.

"Through the Looking-glass"...

Turning to the right, or turning to the left, you are still measuring the forward movement of time......

Measurement is the assignment of a number to a characteristic of an object or event, which can be compared with other objects or events.

Time is an abstract measurement of elemental changes over a non spatial continuum.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but clocks are just motors. They have no unknown connection to something called "time". We are just observing the position of the motor shaft. Not "measuring the forward movement of time."

Always cringed when the observed clock rate changed in science fiction!

Yeah save that argument for your boss when you're late for work, see how far it gets you...haha There is no time, just space-time...

Why did you buy this clock?

Personal satisfaction.

It makes you see things differently.

And yesterday was my birthday and I told my wife that I wanted it.

Happy Birthday Lyn! Hope you have wonderful time. God Bless you!

Lyn,

Now I know why I always enjoyed your post. Yesterday was my birthday also. I turned 66. Now my goal is to live long enough to see both those numbers turn over. I got dark chocolate and workout clothes.

Happy Birthday to you also. 69 for me.

My goal is to just make it through today.

No sense worrying about tomorrow until I'm sure today is behind me.

Cheers.

Now you need to add an MP3 player with a recording of Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time" to go with the clock.

Sorry guys, but this was the best answer. GA to you my politically incorrect friend!

AKA, the Bill Cosby popularity clock.

Lyn, a silly question, but you wrote that one of the boys noticed it ran backwards. How many didn't notice it?

They all noticed the difference, of course. Hard not to.

He's the only one who put it in those terms.

And now that Lyn has his backwards clock he'll be trying to tell us he can fly backwards too.

I would say clock wise would have been right hand down & anti clockwise would have been left hand down.

Just like when you tell someone which way to turn the steering wheel you don't say clockwise you say right hand down

You'd get short shrift from me if you tried that. Just point at where you want me to put the corner of the vehicle or trailer you're standing next to and I'll work out the rest.

Windmilling arms don't work either - I've been known to stop the vehicle and get out to explain it to my "helper" in words of less than one syllable.

For those who don't know, I have an articulated wagon license, so you can put away the women driver jokes

There's only one place for "Left hand down a bit..." and that's at sea. Ev'rybody down!!!!

Around these parts, there is still a rodeo entertainment event, called "Sugar Booger Backup", which is pretty self-explanatory. The cowboy gets to direct his wife or lady friend to back up the truck with attached horse trailer to a targeted point on the ground. Time and accuracy matter.

Some of these ladies are absolutely astounding in their innate ability to perform this task, others, well, not so much. About as with men, I assume. It is all in getting their clocks and their wise not mixed up to be sure.

I always tell new backer uppers to simply put a hand on the bottom of the steering wheel and, while looking in the mirror or just looking back, move the hand on the bottle of the wheel whichever way you want the trailer to go. And, take your time and don't be afraid to pull forward and try again.

Eventually it becomes second nature.

But isn't it also something to do with the geometry of length of trailer, wheel base, turning circle and the pivot of the towing hook.

Some combinations back up easily whilst others are near impossible.

This has nothing to do with any of that. The trailer reacts the same way no matter.

Yes, a short trailer is more difficult, but you still turn the wheel the same way.

That's what I said, and although you turn the wheel the same way - just how much is the trick - and skill to park a trailer - helped by the geometry.

Myself I'm hopeless at reversing a trailer. My son can do it though - he's good. My wife! - say no more - she has trouble parking frontwards.

If she reads this - I'm a dead man walking.

I just say turn right or turn left, meaning the vehicle. It's up the the driver to work out the details, depending if they are going forward or backing.

Yup, that works...if

a) I can hear you; and

b) I've been calibrated that day (for left and right)

In a time pressured situation, it's best just to point

The curious thing is the use of a circular, repeating device to measure something that is linear and runs, ignoring any implications from General Relativity for the moment, in a hypothetical straight line at a steady rate.

It all comes about because the rotation of this planet relative to the sun became a measuring device.

Time would be measured differently on Mars and on Venus; a calendar has been defined for Mars, just in case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_Mars

Pah!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_astronomical_clock

Counter Corioles effect maybe?

Don't know. But I can guess.

Because in ancient times before clocks were invented, time could be measured by the shadow of the Sun passing round a vertical stick (someone has already said sundial above) and the movement of the shadow would be emulated by the hands of the first clock - from which 'clockwise' has slipped into use to describe the direction all sorts of rotary things. And very useful at that.

I have got a 'backward' clock. It hangs on the wall of my bathroom facing the mirror.

It shows the 'right time' when I use the mirror.

Unless you have a backwards vampire clock, in which case you see nothing at all! What a shock.

Bar clocks might be set up backward for a simple and common sense reason. A man sitting with his back to the swinging doors, keeps one eye on the clock on the opposite wall (turning clockwise in the mirror), and one eye on the door, so he can turn and fire when being assailed by a shootist. It will be a lustrum of years before I can afford to view passage of time in this way.

One thing is clear - it is possible to sit absolutely still with respect to one's frame of reference in space-time, but never possible to sit still in time in space-time. Now is it.

" A man sitting with his back to the swinging doors, keeps one eye on the clock on the opposite wall (turning clockwise in the mirror)", "... turn and fire when being assailed by a shootist" - I assure you that neither of these apply in my local.

"...so he can turn and fire when being assailed by a shootist....".

Would that be clockwise ?

I suppose that would be clockwise, as viewed above the bar of the saloon. Not absolute requirement though, he could be a left-handed shooter, and in that case would naturally pivot anti-clockwise. In either case, depending on who is mad at him, who has threatened him earlier, we would be wise to (1) not go off half-cocked, and (2) to keep his pistol on the ready, but back then cocking a pistol while still holstered is an invitation to shoot your own leg off.

Actually, if he is good enough, he would just reach for his pistol, twist up the holster, aim and fire without drawing the weapon, depending on the type of holster, and freedom to operate it in that manner. Otherwise, he must draw while turning sideways, lean away from possible incoming line of fire, train his weapon on the assailant, and fire, all of this before the assailant can put him asunder.

Wild Bill Hickok died when he was shot in the back (of the head) by the cowardly Jack McCall, who was re-arrested once back in United States territory (not Indian country at Deadwood was at the time), tried by a real court, found guilty and hanged, later exhumed with the noose still over his neck. Good and dead. The best place for a coward is in the cemetery...either digging or growing lilies.

I am not sure how many lives have been saved by having a large mirror behind the bar in a saloon. More than a few, I expect. A man can be killed just about every way possible in a saloon, too bad, since most of them go in just to get a doggone drink.

Life always seems to be dangerous at the watering holes.

Most of those cowards were buried at a "cemetary" outside the outskirts of town. No gravestone and just a bunch of "those people" buried with other undesirables.

Aside - the landlord in my local pub put up a backwards-running clock a couple of years ago. Caused so much controversy - particularly around chucking-out time - that it had to go after a fortnight.

Clocks like these were common in barber shops. The client could look in the mirror and see the correct time, not a backward reflection.

If you bring up cw/ccw, you'll totally mess up my wife--she has trouble understanding cw/ccw concept even without considering novelty backwards clocks!

I ought to get one and put up in kitchen, maybe my wife would get younger and start cooking again, running around in nothing but an apron, and I would "get some".

Like a dog chasin' a car. Would he know what to do with it if he caught it?

Knowing me if time ran backwards, we would unmake love. About like my dog George chasing mom and dad's car, tripping over a rabbit (that ducked under the car), and not sure what to do after he found it stunned.

Or like me and "the monster" - if it caught me, it would let go in the morning when it saw me clearly.

Now Lyn, if you could get Lyn-Dor Industries to come out with a clock that would run backwards really until I was 24 yrs old, had all my hair (not on my back), and not forgetting what I know now, then you would have a winner.

If I could do that, I'd just make myself Emperor of the world and we wouldn't be having all these perpetual elections and certainly would not have psychotic egomaniacs with delusions of grandeur running for office.

NO comment! I just can't say it. Mom always taught me if I can't say something nice don't say anything at all.

Obviously, the psychopath's mother gave him opposite advice. He never says ANYTHING nice about ANYBODY who does not bow down before him and worship him.

Heil Hitler Trump.

At least you didn't say Heil Hitler James! By the way, I will be holding meetings at the local beer hall sometime.

This is turning into a bumpy road at best. By the way, the State Department Inspector General came out with a report yesterday that damns Hillary Clinton for having a private "server". Basically, the "butler" did it. Sorry about the pun, I could not resist the urge even for a far left field one.

As to Trump, he is far less Heil material than OBummer or Bill Clinton. I don't trust the brown trash president any further than he can be flung. And I sure don't trust a white man claiming to be "the first black president", or a guy that having that serious of a job, can't keep his mind on his business, or keep his d*** in his pants. Not to mention Hillary's lesbo affairs, or the murders she has committed. Stacked up against that Trump looks like a shiny penny.

Come November we'll find out.

The pickings are rather slim in either case.

Many clocks have a moon dial. Evidently at some point in history the moon was used for telling time thus the throwback on modern timepieces. Therefore it would have to have been moonwise and countermoonwise. These would have needed a NH or SH qualifier dependent upon one's location.

Yes but that was many moons ago....

When you read it, multiply your results by the square root of -1. That'll fix it.

?eussi eht s'tahw, em ot thgir skooL

A barber shop I once went to had a backwards clock with the numbers backwards too. It was so the patrons could see the time while looking at the clock in the mirror.

I think you mean Anti-Barber Shop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPT_symmetry

When I was a college (16-18 yo in the UK), there was room left open for those of us who got in early to go and study. My friend and I turned the battery around in the clock most mornings so that it ran backwards and set it so it told "backwards time" (at 0800 it read 4 o'clock and at 0900 it read 3 o'clock. The first time, it took several eeks for anyone to notice.By the time they changed it back, I couldn't tell the time the right way round in that room. I can't remember how they got us to stop...they might have removed the clock...

"...it took several eeks." Shrieks and screams, of oh no those nasty science girls have finally made time go backward, but I am still falling forward in it, eek ,eeek.