Jacopo Dondi | 24-Hour Watches by Jake Delaney

Telling the time

Telling the time on a 24-hour dial can be tricky to begin with. You are essentially learning how to tell the time all over again. The trickiness isn’t because of something inherent to 24-hour dials but rather because of our conditioning to only use 12-hour dials.

This dials display the time in 10-minute increments, but you can easily estimate the time to the nearest 5 minutes by simply focusing for a little longer. Sure, you could argue that 12-hour dials display the time more accurately, but when does it truly matter if it’s 15:59 or 16:00, anyway? This is time displayed more naturally, not more accurately.

Psychology of the dial

Owning, wearing and even just seeing a 24-hour dial gives you an entirely different awareness of time itself. 

Once you start using a 24-hour dial, you soon become aware of the fact that it’s a much more natural way of visualizing where you are in your day.

Using your watch as a compass

As well as simply telling the time, you can also use your watch as a compass. Simply point the hand towards the position of the sun and wherever the ’12’ or ’24’ marker is pointing (depending on which hemisphere you’re in), is North; it may come in handy one day!

It just makes sense

The 24-hour dial just seems to make sense – one hand that passes each marker once a day.

It might not change the world, but it could change yours.