Archive for October 23rd, 2008

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

It’s easy enough to understand why some people spend huge sums of money on wristwatches - aside from vices like vanity, avarice, and ego, there’s the whole “fine timepiece” marketing mystique, where watches are equated with jewelry, rather than treated as a functional piece of clothing, or a functional accessory, like a belt.

The manufacturers of “fine timepieces” tout a huge variety of snake-oil claims to promote their wares’ superiority and prices; one of the most common examples is timekeeping accuracy. The funny thing they don’t tell you, though, is that quartz watches - i.e. “electronic” watches - are all, for all practical purposes, about equally accurate. (We’re talking variations in single-digit parts per million, here.)
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Published in: General, Geekiness | on October 23rd, 2008 | No Comments »