Why all the watches move in the same direction?

Answer 1

The answers about the sun dials are pretty much on point. However, early man followed the shadows long before they put numbers around some clock face for the shadows to fall on. Even without a clock face, the shadows traveled in what we call the clockwise direction. Early mankind noticed that. As someone put it I think, it was the natural thing to do when it came time to use something other than sun cast shadows to tell time by.

Answer 2

If we see the world map most of the land portion is only in the Northern hemisphere of earth.

Naturally the contribution to astronomy was made with reference to people belonging to Northern hemisphere only.

One day is the duration of interval of time for the sun to go once round the earth.

Sun goes from East to West. The pole star which is in the north is the reference point during night.

A pole is erected vertically on the ground on any place in the northern hemisphere.

Its shadow points the north or pole star when the sun is at the zenith. Let us mark the tip of the shadow of the pole. Now it is noon.

At mid night the pole, the mark and the North Pole will be in one straight line.

The direction of the motion of the shadow is taken as the direction for time.

Thus it continued as clockwise direction.

The reason for the clockwise direction is followed from the Sun dial used by the people in the Northern hemisphere.

Answer 3

This question is similar to"Why is the fixed distance between two marks is known as one metre in length or one foot in length?". This is a very fundamental thing which was recognised by someone after which each & every one recognises in the same way.In a similar manner the direction of movement of the seconds hand,the minutes hand as well as the hour hand was fixed by one of our predecessors which was recognised at that time & is being followed by everyone since then. The direction of the movements of the hands of the clock brings to us the fundamental of direction of rotation viz.clockwise(similar in direction to the movement of the hands of the clock) or anticlockwise(reverse in direction to the movement of the hands of the clock).
This brings into my mind the following question which appeared in the Readers Digest viz."In this age of Digital Watches how to explain to students the term clockwise & anticlockwise".
In one of the bar in a hotel in Finland, I have seen a watch running in the reverse direction. On this abnormal behaviour, my query was replied as follows:-
Whenever people get drunk they lose track of time & it is at this time we show the watch & tell that it is already 1 AM whereas the actual time is only 11 PM. In this way they see to it that people leave the bar early & also do not get drunk.
I hope this explanation is clear as well as giving you a new way of stopping people from getting DRUNK.!!!!!!

Answer 4

Sundials came first, and the sun's shadow went around the dial toward the right. When the first clocks were developed, it seemed natural to have them go the same direction.

I've seen joke watches and clocks that run the other way.

Answer 5

Time moves forward ,depicted as clockwise like the numerals suggest.
Anti clockwise would be going back in time.
It could also be because of the gear mechanism used earlier in analog time pieces and some sort of a world standard.

Answer 6

some watches have got only numbers rising and starting again from zero (Digital Quartz) but no direction they are always on the wrists, they just do not move anywhere !!!!!!!

Answer 7

Clockwise originally comes from sundials, in the Northern Hemisphere.

Answer 8

because we ll move towards the front and never tend to go backwards, the days are always back, after every night there is morning, for which there is a new days, so the clocks run the same ways.

Answer 9

mine doesnt...All earth watches move in the same direction...where i come from it moves in a hyperboloid

Answer 10

That is the convention. It could just as well have been the other way.