Reading clocks.

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I'm quite the opposite of of most people here, it seems. I learned to read clocks at a very young age. I could read analog clocks at the age of four, and digital clocks less than a year later. This shocked my preschool teachers out of their minds. While most kids kept track of time through events such as storytime, naptime, and lunchtime, I went by hours in a day. This made it hard for my parents to put me to bed earlier than normal, since I watched the time like a hawk, but oh well. To this day, I nearly freak out if I'm in a situation without some kind of a clock.

This seems strange to me. I always know exactly what time it is, without needing to check a clock (within a minute or two). People I work with will ask me the time and I never wear a watch, but I'm always right. Always.

i don't think i ever had a problem with reading clocks. when i was younger i had a fascination with clocks and remember drawing them.

I can read clocks, but my husband can't.

I always divide the hour into the minutes.

im this way too... it works to my advantage because i can't wear watches--i kill them somehow. i can buy a new watch and within a month or two, it's dead. i tried pocket watches of all kinds too. they all die. weird.

growing up, i had troubles learning to read analog clocks. i remember in school i kept getting the time wrong whenever the teacher would call on me to tell her what time it was from the classroom wall clock...so i bought a digital watch thinking that i could cheat and just read my watch instead... didn't work, got busted.

but to this day, if the minute hand isn't on one of the quarter hour marks, i have to sit and actually count up all the minutes to figure out the exact time.

I had a hard time learning to tell time and still misread clocks. I didn't know that is common with aspies.

I don't remember learning how to tell the time, it seems like I've always known. I remember telling the time on the analogue clock on the wall at home before I started school. My first expensive watch (when I was eight, I thought I was so special!) was analogue with no numbers around the outside to guide telling the time. I didn't even think about not being able to tell the time on it. I had no problems.
I think it was Mum's influence there, I don't think we had digital clocks in the house when I was learning to tell time. I feel somewhat lucky.

I have difficulty reading analog clocks. Nor do I see the point in them, now that we have digital why not just get rid of analog? I’m not sure if this is an AS thing though, where did you hear this is there an article somewhere? If there is I’d be glad to see it and know that it’s not entirely my fault for being so dumb with clocks.

About 20 years ago, my father told me he expected that by now my kids would probably look at an analogue clock, and ask me what it was, because digital took over. It's one of the few predictions like that he ever made that didn't come out right, and I'm glad of that - analogue clocks and watches are usually far more beautiful to look at, especially the mechanical ones where you can see the springs and gears and everything.



That said, it took me forever to figure out how to read one, and even today I can read one only by stopping, taking a deep breath, and concentrating on it for a moment. If there's too much going on, it's like I can barely see the clock... it reminds me of one of those ABC After-School movies I saw as a kid about dyslexia, where this dislexic kid would look at a book and all the letters looked like gibberish, and stop signs would have the letters literally mixed up and backwards... not quite like that, but an analogue clock does effectively look completely different when I can look at it calmly, from when I'm under too much pressure, and then it's completely alien and I can't make any sense of it.


So, as an art object, I find analogue clocks to be much easier on the eyes. But if life depended on it, I'd be forced to go with digital, without giving it a second thought.

I've actually got a little alarm cloch that tells you the day (Fri, for instance), date (9/30/2005), tell you the approximate temperature and of course tell the time in both analoge AND Digital! Barely use it to it's full potential, though.

Here's a pic:


Anyway, I'm quite contempt with clocks. It gives something to concentrate on. It's actually an NT friend of mine who gets driven crazy by them. Whenever he's over for the night, I have to remover all the clocks and bury them under multiple layers of blankets in my wardrobe before he'll go to sleep.

I don't think it took me long to make sense of clocks, but trying to convert to 24 hour time and back is a major bite in the arsenal.

I was apparently obssessed with clocks at a young age to the point my first word was in fact 'clock'.

I can read analouge clocks but even to this day I still have to think about it for a moment to work it out. I tend to think in digital and convert the analouge visual into a mental digital. It's like dealing with languages, I know english intuitively, but if I hear a foreign language, even one I know ok, I still convert it into english before understanding as opposed to just knowing it intuitively like a true native/dual speaker would.

i read analogs just fine, but the hour hand has to match the minute hand, i.e. if it's 6.10 the hour hand has to be slightly to the left by 1/6th or i get uncomfortable. i can't stand looking at the newfangled clocks with differently sized numbers. i LOVE the idea of a binary watch but i think it'd just be hell for me to read those.

i used to have a mental time-table, i.e. 6.10 i have to be dressed, 6.12 my shoes have to be on and tied, 6.15 i have to be out the door, 6.23 i have to be at the bus stop etc. it got so bad i kept looking at my watch. threw out my watch 10 years ago and what a liberating feeling that was!

KBABZ: "I don't think it took me long to make sense of clocks, but trying to convert to 24 hour time and back is a major bite in the arsenal."

hear hear! i can do math just fine but the 24 hr clock just really gets to me for some reason!

I learnt to read a digital clock when I was 3 years old, and I knew to count from 1 to 60 at this age.

But I had problems with the analog clock. Now If I want to read the hour of an analog clock, I spend like 10 seconds reading the hour.

In theory, 24-hour time shouldn't be that complicated -

If I remember correctly, to convert to 24-hour time, just add 12 to the P.M. hours starting at 1:00 PM:
8:00 AM (morning) simply becomes 8:00
12:00 PM (noon) simply becomes 12:00
1:00 PM becomes 13:00
8:00 PM becomes 20:00
...etc.

To conver back, any hour larger than 12:00 (i.e., all the goofy, unfamiliar 24-hour times) should have 12 subtracted from it:
14:00 becomes 2:00 PM
21:00 becomes 9:00 PM
9:00 simply becomes 9:00 AM
12:45 simply becomes 12:45 PM
...etc.

(I don't remember quite what happens at midnight with 24-hour time, though - I've never had to worry about it that late at night before. I'm pretty sure it's 24:00, though I wouldn't discount the possibility that I remember wrong and midnight is 0:00 ... )




In practice, though, when faced with a 24-hour time figure I stop, blink at it, take a moment to figure out what it is from its context, remember there's a way to convert it, try to remember how to convert, slowly do the math in my head, double-check it, suddenly get the eerie feeling I don't remember how to tell normal time after all - it's anything but an intuitive, automatic process for me. If I were in the military or something similar, though, and had to deal with it on a daily basis, it would probably be something I'd get pretty good at (and, more than likely, you would too.) After all, I assume the military prefers 24-hour time because it's actually less complicated and confusing, and thus easier to communicate accurately with, than 12-hour AM/PM time.

I have to stare at the clock for 30 seconds before I can figure out what time it is. The same thing even happens with digital clocks sometimes.

oh i know how to convert from 24 hr time, and i have no problem subtracting 12 from x where 13 < x < 24

problem lies in somewhere, somehow my brain doesn't seem to register, and i keep getting an answer as if i'd only subtracted 10. i.e. 1500, my mind tells me it's 5pm, when i know that's not right and i have to recheck again.

get what i mean?