What’s the Deal with Clockwise?

Everyone knows that the hands on an analog clock run in a clockwise direction, from left to right.

But frankly…what’s up with that?

Why don’t clocks run from right to left instead?

Why do we simply take this for granted? I mean, what if we all just decided to wake up one day and have our clocks run counter-clockwise, from right to left, instead?

Well, just hold on a second, Junior – let me take a short break, and I’ll get right back to you with the answers.

There. I’m back.

The deal with clockwise is, you have to remember that our first clocks were the direct descendents of sundials. Sundials were of course used to measure time by tracking the movement of the sun in the sky.

Also, the first clocks were created in the northern hemisphere, where the sun indeed traveled from the left to the right in the sky.

The earliest clocks attempted to copy the movement of the sun and were thought of as being mechanical versions of sundials. Since the sun moved from left to right for the first clock inventors, it just made sense to make clocks move in this direction too.

Did you know that Online Clock also has an analog alarm clock?

Now then…clock’s ticking…time for me to run (clockwise, of course).

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Tags: alarm clock blog, analog alarm clock, Analog Clock, clock history, clocks, clocks run clockwise, clockwise, history of clocks, online clock, sundials, why clockwise