<p>In my place of employment, and profession, nursing, a sweep second hand on a watch has always been a basic piece of outfitting for work. You can assess respirations and heart rate with digital timepieces, but it is less intuitive, and uses brain energy better spent on other tasks. Most hospitals don’t allow cell phones to be out and obvious, so a watch is needed. </p>
<p>Digital watches seemed to have a brief period of stylishness, and then the dial came back in fashion. My kids, if they have a watch, like Swatches. Are they an anachronism?</p>
<p>Clock towers & grandfather clocks - I love them. So does my analog-challenged D. But that’s for their art and their beauty, not necessarily for telling time. We don’t have analog clocks at home because DH and I have always worn watches, and we’ve just never seen the need to have wall clocks.</p>
<p>We also use the “directional” clock, which for some reason my D does understand.</p>
<p>ETA: It’s kind of like when they say on TV: Don’t touch that dial! We all know there aren’t dials, but we still know what it means. Same with “sounding like a broken record.” We still wait for a dial tone, but when’s the last time you actually used a rotary phone?</p>
<p>Those parts of analog timekeeping (like directionals) will remain, long after analogs aren’t used as standard timepieces any more.</p>
On some cars the clock will be displayed in your choice of format, an analog display or a digital display, since it’s really the computer generating the display based on it’s internal clock (which is neither analog or digital in the context being discussed which is really discussing the means of display). Your PC and probably your smartphone have these options as well. </p>
<p>I have mine set to a numeric display. ;)</p>
<p>I was wondering when someone would bring up the old rotary phone. I haven’t seen one of those in a while and I don’t doubt that some younger people wouldn’t know what to do with one if they encountered one. It’d be interesting to see if they could figure it out.</p>
<p>One of these days people won’t know how to start a car if there’s no button to push that their smart key enabled.</p>
<p>My officemate misdialed on our phone the other day. He asked me what button you push to undo the last digit. He seemed really confused when I told him he just had to hang up and try again.</p>
<p>Igloo, lots of digital phones don’t actually dial now until you hit a send key. I think that’s 100% true on cell phones, and I know is also true for the phone system I have in my house.</p>
<p>Romani- all of our phones were rotary dial when I was growing up. Guess that tells my age. In addition, phone numbers were given as an “exchange” I think it was called. For example YORKSHIRE7-1111 meant you dialed the numbers associated with the 1st 2 letters of the exchange, followed by 7-1111. When we tried to call my Grandmothers on holidays it often took several hours to get through as the phone lines couldn’t handle all of the calls. When I was a teenager our town was small enough that all of the phone numbers in town started with 525. To dial anyone in town, you only had to dial 5 digits: 5-1111. When I was in college, I could only call home once a week because it was expensive to call long distance, Times have improved phone service.</p>
<p>More than 10 years ago I bought an old rotary phone at a church rummage sale. By “old”, I mean the classic, heavy Bell telephone that we all remember not some pretty antique thing. I thought the kids would be entranced by it but they were indifferent. However, it is the ONLY phone that works during a power outage so I have it around, just in case. </p>
<p>I figured out you can do “call waiting” on it by hanging up and quickly picking up again. The volume control is on a switch on the underside.</p>
<p>I miss those old phones - not for the rotary dials, but for the handsets. They were extremely comfortable to hold against your ear for long periods of time. I find modern phones (both cordless and cell) a literal pain after a while. I have a corded touchtone princess phone from the '80s that still works perfectly and that I love to use.</p>
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<p>The breakup of the AT&T monopoly in the '80s started this.</p>
<p>For clocks I love digital in military time which our hospital used. No AM or PM, easy to do math (4 hours later meant–well, add 4 hours to whatever the time was). I still have my phone in military time.</p>
<p>booklady - at one point I had one of those old phones, plus a heavy plastic attachment that glued onto the handset so you could tuck it against your ear, hands free, and not have to tilt your head to the side at all! It was so comfortable. </p>
<p>Now, there are some goofy iPhone attachments that look like an old handset that you plug into your cell phone so you can chat just like the old days - only in brighter colors. </p>
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