Have you ever noticed that when you see watches and clocks in adverts or on display, they are usually set to ten past ten?
- the hands do not overlap so you can see their design and style
- the hands at this setting are symmetrical and look happy (strangely, this apparently makes a difference). Apparently 8.20 was used for a time in the 1920s and 1930s, but it looked sad:
- it allows you to clearly see the logo, date, name, secondary dials etc., which are usually at 12, 3 and 6 o’clock.
This was rather a challenging blog post for me to write, because Sweden uses the 24 hour clock, where the 3 would be for both 3 and 15, 6 would be for both 6 and 18, and 12 would be for 12 and 24. I used the good old ‘o’ clock’ which felt strange, but worked very well.