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It’s time…

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for a simpler video.

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See, time is a precious commodity for me at the present time.

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There’s just a lot going on at the same time for me right now,

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and timing hasn’t been great.

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In times like these, I’ve found that talking about clocks

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works most of the time.

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Anyway, let’s not waste any time

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and get a move on.

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Tick tock.

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As I’m sure you’ve gathered from the thumbnail and the words below it,

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this video’s about these clocks.

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Are these still popular?

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I think so.

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But, now that I think about it,

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maybe not so much anymore.

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I mean, they're no longer the default Android wallpaper on, like...

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all of them.

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Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I like them.

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And while aesthetics are the main reason I like them,

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a close second is how they work.

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These clocks are a lot simpler than they may seem at first glance,

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but very clever.

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To understand them,

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we’ll first need to learn about latent heat 
and the refrigeration cycle.

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Kidding!

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Haha, got you there.

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I sure am a stinker.

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But here’s the thing:

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once you know how these clocks work?

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You’ll flip!

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Flip clocks like these are digital clocks,

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but they’re also not at all.

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Sometimes called analog clocks with digital displays,

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these have much more in common with an ordinary clock like this

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than they do a digital clock like that.

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All this thing really is is a 24 hour clock
with weird hands.

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I was hoping you’d flip to eight o’clock right there.

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C’mon, do it.

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Do it.

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Do it.

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Do it.

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Do it.

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[CLACK]

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There we go.

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First try!

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Take a look.

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Here’s a normal clock.

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It’s got two hands!

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Some even have a third hand which we call
"the second."

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It’s great.

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But for now all we care about is the hour
and minute hands.

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Now the job of every clock like this out there
is to move the hands slowly and deliberately.

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How that’s accomplished isn’t important
right now

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but the minute hand makes one revolution every hour

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and a bit of gearing slows that
down by a factor of 12

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so that the hour hand makes one revolution every 12 hours.

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Notice that the hands are stacked.

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The minute hand is in front of the hour hand.

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It has to be for the gearing to work,

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and that’s really convenient for a flip clock.

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See, imagine the clock’s hands were…

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thick.

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The minute hand could be extended out,

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and the hour hand could extended inward.

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Now imagine that instead of hands they were drums.

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And now imagine that the clock were turned
so that the edges of the drums were visible.

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Now we’re gettin’ somewhere!

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We’ve now got two drums,

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one of which rotates once every hour,

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and the other rotates once every twelve.

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Ah, but I’d like an AM/PM indicator please

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(or maybe 24 hours if that’s your jam)

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so let’s make one of them take a full day to go ‘round.

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What have we accomplished?

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Well, we could print the numbers 00 through
59 on one of the drums,

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then the hours on the other,

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and have some sort of viewing window.

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But that would be really silly and take a
huge clock to be readable at a distance.

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To be clear, clocks which used three drums

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as seen in this incredibly convenient stock footage

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were a thing, but we’re talkin’ about the flippy kind today.

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What if instead, we loosely attach a series
of cards to the drums and hold them up like this?

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Like a Rolodex!

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Some of you know what those are.

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Attach the cards so that they can swing at
least 180 degrees,

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and by holding the edge of one of them so that it’s vertical,

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the adjacent card will be hanging down and their edges will meet in the center.

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Print numbers on these cards so that the numbers
span two of them

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and you’ve made a numeric display.

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Speaking of displays, some of you might now be thinking about the classic

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split-flap display of train station and airport departure boards of yesterday,

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FastPass distribution and return clocks of yestertoday,

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or that new one you can buy which is connected to the cloud because of course.

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I say that snarkily but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want it.

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This is on a really low level the same sort
of technology,

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but those displays are often alphanumeric

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and sometimes even more complicated than that.

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And they have much more in-depth mechanics and control circuitry.

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The way they show things is the same,

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but the technology behind them is a lot more involved.

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I’d like to talk about them some day,

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but that day’s not today.

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Today it’s this, and this is just a clock.

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Anyway, as the drum...

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well actually now it’s more like a wheel.

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As the wheel is turned,

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the card being held up slowly gets pulled downward.

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The little catch holding it up doesn’t move with the card

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so eventually the card that’s currently out front

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slips past its little finger and…

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flip!

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The next card is revealed.

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Look from the side and you can see how the cards intermingle.

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That catch is placed on a line roughly tangential to the front edge of the wheel,

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which not only ensures the two cards visible are proudly right out front,

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but causes the upcoming and ongoing cards to bunch up neatly.

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As they make their way around the back they
get turned upside-down again

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and bunch up once more,

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waiting for their minute of fame.

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And that’s all that’s going on here!

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This wheel operates just like the minute hand of a normal clock.

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It’s just turning slowly, making one complete rotation every hour.

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It becomes a digital clock simply by creating a choke point using this catch,

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which forces the cards to bunch up at the top

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and get displayed one at a time.

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When sped up you can see how the exposed face
appears to be moving continuously downward.

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That is effectively what’s happening as
we’re seeing the front edge of a rotating wheel,

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and the gap between two cards is at
the surface of the wheel itself.

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So, naturally, the other side of the clock is just an hour hand!

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But there are two special things going on here.

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One is that it’s geared in a 1:24 ratio to the other wheel

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so that this rotates once per day.

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But with only 24 cards,

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that would leave a large gap between them

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and thus a lot more of the upcoming card would be visible.

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You can always see a bit of the next card,

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and 24 just isn’t enough to cover it up

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without seeing part of the actual text.

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That’d be ugly.

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So instead there are 48 cards.

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Each hour has two cards so that the next card
is more completely covered.

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You can see, if you look carefully,

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that sliiightly more of the next card is visible on the hours side than the minutes.

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And with only 24 cards that gap would be twice as large.

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You might think, then, that those hour cards
flip at the bottom and top of the hour,

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but you’d be wrong!

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They actually flip somewhere around twenty
and fifty minutes past the hour.

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That might sound entirely silly.

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After all, if it flipped at 50 minutes

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you’d have a clock go from saying 11:50 AM to 12:51 PM

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and that’s no good,

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in fact entirely unacceptable!

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Simply not up to snuff!

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Inadequate!

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And so on.

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Nevertheless, that’s exactly what the hour
card does.

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But there’s a catch.

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See, we simply don’t have the precision

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to make the hour card flip exactly on cue

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with the transition from 59 minutes to 00 using an ordinary clock movement.

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At least, not by itself.

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The hour cards are in fact deliberately misaligned
from the minute cards

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so that they flip much too early,

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and a clever little second catch prevents the second hour card

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from revealing the next until the minute card 59 has flipped.

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Take a look, here’s the clock showing mmhm:55.

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The hour card has actually already slipped
past the initial catch,

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but this little finger thing is holding it back once more.

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Starting at about 40 minutes you can see the
finger start to move.

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Built into the minute wheel is this little
ramp thing.

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As the wheel turns it pushes on this piece
here which connects to the catch via a pushrod.

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Once it’s in place, the second hour card
cannot fall beyond the catch.

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At some somewhat random point near the fifty
minute mark

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it will fall from the main catch,

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and in fact you can see it leaning slightly
forward once it does so,

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but it doesn’t really matter when the second card falls

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so long as it’s after that catch has moved into position.

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As we get close to 59 minutes

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you’ll see that the ramp thing is no longer pushing on the catch.

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Instead, it hands that duty off to this little
flag protrusion on the 59 card itself.

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By the time we’re at 59,

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that’s the only thing pushing the catch to the left.

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So, once the 59 card falls,

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the catch is released,

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so the hour card also falls

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revealing the next hour at the same moment 00 is revealed.

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This not only ensures satisfying synchronization,

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but reduces the need to go overboard with precision manufacturing.

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So long as the hour card flips after the catch
has moved but before it’s been released,

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it’s OK,

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and that gives about a 20 minute margin for
error in alignment between the two wheels.

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Isn’t this just the neatest idea you’ve ever heard of‽

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That’s hyperbole, yes,

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but this really is just the guts of an ordinary analog clock

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sandwiched between two very weird hands with a bit of support hardware.

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The main difference between these clocks and
something like this one

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is that they have motors which continuously move,

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rather than the stepping action typical of quartz clocks.

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That means they don’t tick, they just sort of… rattle a bit

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and click every minute.

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Some flip clocks do have typical tick tock
movements in them,

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for what it’s worth.

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Whether these have an actual quartz movement is unclear,

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but these two keep decent time so I think that’s probably the case.

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However, these large clocks take D cells

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so I imagine the motor is larger than that which you’d find in a

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quartz-but-smooth-second-hand clock,

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which do exist by the way.

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Does anybody know what I’m talking about here?

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Doesn’t matter, new paragraph! \

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This style of clock isn’t without weaknesses, though.

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Even assuming you have a clock which keeps perfect time over a day,

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each minute flip will be just a little bit off.

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The way the clock works and its imprecise manufacturing

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means that the timing between flips is somewhat random and never exactly a minute.

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I mean, not *that* random

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but put a seconds reference next to one and you’ll see that

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it’s not exactly consistent when it flips.

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00:10:48,598 --> 00:10:51,254
This also means that if you’re the kind of person

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who hates having multiple clocks in the same room

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which don’t show the exact same time

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(like me)

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you’re not gonna want to display a collection of these together.

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They will never stay in sync.

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Perhaps their most serious drawback is that
the mechanism is one-way only.

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To set the time you can only move forward,

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which means that in the fall when we do that thing with the clocks,

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you either need to set it forward by 23 hours 
(which is quite a chore)

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or take the battery out for an hour

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and try your best to remember to put it back.

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And even just setting them from the start
is its own kind of annoying.

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Usually you need to overshoot the actual time by a minute

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because the mechanism will roll back slightly when you let go.

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For the kind of person who can’t stand clocks
being more than a few seconds off

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(like me)

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that’s not ideal.

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But I do love the way these look so I put up with it.

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These new clocks are, of course, a retro revival of an old thing.

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The flip clock has been around for many decades,

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but being battery-operated is a fairly new implementation from what I can tell.

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Previously they’d operate on AC power and
use a synchronous motor to keep time.

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That’s actually a fantastic time reference,

244
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between power outages anyway.

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Let me show you one.
[I Got You Babe plays faintly in the background]

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Is that Sonny and Cher?

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This Panasonic alarm clock is a flip clock.

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It’s the only thrift store flip clock I still have

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but like all of them I’ve encountered

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it has a design on a little wheel that's attached
to the motor

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so that you can tell it’s actually running.

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Clever.

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It also featured a tiny dial light so it can be viewed in the dark.

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Clever.

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(unfortunately it's burnt out)

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And it is also fundamentally no different
from regular old analog clocks,

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even down to the alarm function.

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You know how lots of basic alarm clocks have a third
(or fourth) hand that you use to set the alarm?

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This is exactly the same,

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but rather than a hand it’s this little wheel indicator.

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You set the alarm to the time you want,

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and somewhere deep in the depths of this mechanism

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there’s a switch that gets tripped when the displayed time and the set time agree.

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Why am I bringing this up?

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Because Groundhog Day presents this alarm
as going off exactly at 6:00 AM

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and that is not how it works!

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The actual time that you set this alarm to go off

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is merely a suggestion.

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Yeah, there are discrete clicks when you turn this wheel

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and that might make you think that there’s some precision in this mechanism

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but, nope.

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There's no precision at all,

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and it will probably go off at least five minutes earlier than you actually set it.

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It’s just like how no matter how straight
you attempt to point the alarm hand on a clock like this,

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the displayed time will almost never
match precisely when the alarm goes off.

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The mechanism in here just isn’t tied to
the when the numbers flip at all,

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it’s just gonna go off when it decides to goes off.

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Groundhog Day blatantly misrepresents this alarm clock!

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This is the sort of movie pedantry I live for.

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So, of course I did a test to find out exactly
when this alarm would go off if set to 6:00

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and at least here it was actually remarkably close.

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Only a few seconds early.

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[radio switches on]
Now, I used to use this alarm clock

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every morning and I wrote the script based on my memories of that time,

285
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and it’s fair to say I was overselling the inaccuracy here

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but the point remains that the cards flip independently
of the actual alarm mechanism.

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That little fact can just fit its way into your brain

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and bother you every time you watch Groundhog Day as it does me.

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You’re welcome!

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So why did Groundhog Day do it that way?

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Well, almost certainly because somebody on the production team figured out

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that having the alarm go off at 5:56

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would annoy far more people who don't know the intricacies of how these clocks work

294
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than it would satisfy the insufferable nerds like me who do.

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Or perhaps even more likely…

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it’s just way more satisfying and artistic license was taken.

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The clock we see on-screen is actually a prop
clock built for the film.

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See, in 1993 alarm clocks like this were already well
out of fashion

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and this model was almost certainly deliberately chosen

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to reinforce the “tacky and outdated” nature of the hotel.

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But, setting these clocks, as we've established,

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is an absolute pain.

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Especially since you can’t go backwards after a missed take.

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So, to make production easier,

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a special clock was built that just goes back and forth between 5:59 and 6:00 on cue.

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You can actually see here that the card behind
00 is another 59.

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That is definitely not the top of a one.

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Another giveaway is that the whole thing jerks
when the cards flip

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and that is just not right.

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Here’s what it actually looks like.

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But anyway, that’s it!

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It’s time to go.

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I like these clocks quite a bit

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and there are a number of inexpensive options out there in various styles these days.

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I will say that, from my experience,

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you probably want to avoid this cheap one.

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I’ve had two at various points over the
years

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(whichever factory that produces these has been going for more than a decade it seems)

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and they both failed within just a couple of months.

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This model has a radically different mechanism
from these

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and the hour cards actually do sort of get jerked forward like the Groundhog Prop Clock.

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Both clocks I bought stopped flipping the hour at all.

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Which was a bummer.

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This is actually the second of the same exact
model that I’ve purchased

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and both of them work perfectly (I gave the other one away).

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This model appears to have the same exact
mechanism

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and it’s been going strong for more than five years.

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I just purchased this one.

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This is in no way a Victrola.

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Wish that branding wasn’t there.

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And it also works fine, but when I got it

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the 43 card was installed incorrectly

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and was causing some binding in the adjacent numbers.

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Luckily it was easy to fix simply by removing
and re-inserting that card.

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Oh and I’ll leave you with one other bit of clock pedantry.

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These clocks?

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When they’re stopped it’s only right once a day.

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Think about that, idiom writers!

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♫ punctually smooth jazz ♫

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And while aesthetics are the main reason I
like them,

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a close second is the faaaaa

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00:17:32,860 --> 00:17:33,882
See, we….

343
00:17:34,564 --> 00:17:35,698
See, we simply.

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00:17:36,292 --> 00:17:39,099
See, we simply … don have the be deh de buh.

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00:17:39,099 --> 00:17:44,830
And a clever second catch prevents the second
hour card from revealing the next until BLEUH

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00:17:44,830 --> 00:17:48,394
...card from revealing the next…

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00:17:48,394 --> 00:17:51,496
This is a very clunky sentence, and it’s
a very long one.

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00:17:51,496 --> 00:17:56,918
To understand them, we’ll first need to
learn about latent heat and the refrigeration cycle.

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[laughs] 
I knew I would break!

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Ughhhh…

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...we’ll first need to learn about latent heat and the refrigeration cycle.

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[breaks again]

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There’s no way I’m gonna get through that!

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So what'd you think?

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Isn't it a scandal what the production team on Groundhog Day did?

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Misleading millions of people about how clock radios using Flip Technology work?

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The damage to our society is incalculable.