An analog watch (American) or analogue watch (UK and Commonwealth) is a

watch A watch is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached b ...

whose display is not digital but rather analog with a traditional clock face. The name is an example of a

retronym A retronym is a newer name for an existing thing that helps differentiate the original form/version from a more recent one. It is thus a word or phrase created to avoid confusion between older and newer types, whereas previously (before there were ...

; it was coined to distinguish analog watches, which had simply been called "watches", from newer

digital watches A watch is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached by ...

. It strictly refers to the design of the display, regardless of the timekeeping technology used within the watch movement or module, although its counterpart, " digital watch", usually connotes (in most minds)

digital electronics Digital electronics is a field of electronics involving the study of digital signals and the engineering of devices that use or produce them. This is in contrast to analog electronics and analog signals. Digital electronic circuits are usual ...

in both. A digital watch is one in which the time is displayed as a series of digits, e.g. "04:32". An analog watch is one in which the display is not digital, but is indicated (typically) by the continuous motion of one, two, or three rotating pointers or hands pointing to numbers arrayed on a circular dial (the hour hand's movement being analogous to the path of the sun across the sky).

Reading the time on an analog watch

An analog watch has hands to show the time. One for the hours is short and thick. One for the minutes is long and thin. And sometimes one for the seconds which is long and very thin, this is clearly the second hand because it goes round 60 times faster than the minute hand and 720 times faster than the hour hand. Some Analog watches do not have numbers printed onto them; the numbers can still be determined because the strap is always at 12 & 6. Often only the 12 o'clock position is marked, or only the 12, 3, 6 & 9 positions.

Using a watch and the sun as a compass

An analog watch can be used to locate north and south. The Sun appears to move in the sky over a 24-hour period while the hour hand of a 12-hour clock takes twelve hours to complete one rotation. In the northern hemisphere, if the watch is rotated so that the hour hand points toward the Sun, the point halfway between the hour hand and 12 o'clock will indicate south. For this method to work in the southern hemisphere, the 12 is pointed toward the Sun and the point halfway between the hour hand and 12 o'clock will indicate north. During

daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time or simply daylight time (United States, Canada, and Australia), and summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks (typicall ...

, the same method can be employed using 1 o'clock instead of 12. There are relatively minor inaccuracies due to the difference between

local time Local time is the time observed in a specific locality. There is no canonical definition. Originally it was mean solar time, but since the introduction of time zones it is generally the time as determined by the time zone in effect, with daylight s ...

and zone time, and due to the

equation of time In mathematics, an equation is a formula that expresses the equality of two expressions, by connecting them with the equals sign . The word ''equation'' and its cognates in other languages may have subtly different meanings; for example, in F ...

. The method functions less well as one gets closer to the equator.

References

External links

Watch Repair Technical Training
{{DEFAULTSORT:Analog Watch Watches