Question: Are alarm clocks obsolete?

sunvalleylaw said:
I don't like to have my phone in my bedroom at night. So, no. I like a good, ol' red numbered clock radio with dual alarms.

When I was a kid, we had a clock radio that had leaf style numbers that flipped over. You could hear the numbers flip like a little camera shutter. Try to find one of those at the thrift store.
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Those were like 1970's high tech. I still think they're cool.
 
BlackCat said:
I'm asking because I just tried to find one at Target. I asked a Target lady and she gave me a perplexed look then set me to the wall clock isle.

This is like the time I asked for a road map at a gas station.
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I don't doubt this and I bet she was a post millennial...a 19-23 year old. For all the technology they have and all the access to technology they are getting dumber and dumber probably because they just snapchat and facebro all day. Well maybe not dumber but they have no sense of historical reference....and many not much common sense. .....


anyway I still have the same clock with alarm that i got in 1985, yes 1985...the fucking thing still works and it refuses to die. It's exactly like this one picture I found on eBay, selling for 26 dollars


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The best part is i haven't had to use an alarm clock in probably 3 decades because I have internal alarm clock superpowers and I can literally wake up to whatever time i set my mind to. I never sleep past 4:30 am anymore anyway due to Sonny waking me up :embarrassed:
 
I don't use an alarm of any kind normally. My brain wakes me up when I need to be up. Even if I set an alarm I wake up about a minute before it goes off. Most alarm clocks have been relegated to large print version of a clock.

Look at this beaut. It was left in the lab I took over 16 years ago. The clock no longer works but I can get am for day time baseball games or the middle third of the FM spectrum. I love the fake digital readout and the wood grain finish. It's a classic.

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I just purchased a new alarm clock with huge numbers for my aging eyes. Of course, our 10-year-old wakes up at 6 a.m. each day, so we don't really need an alarm clock.
 
In theory I could use my phone, but I like just rolling over and looking at the big red numbers when I wake up in the middle of the night rather that fumbling for a phone when I'm half out of it.

Nine days out of ten I'm awake before the alarm goes off anyway.
 
Tig said:
I remember listening to the flap noise when I was trying to sleep. I run a fan now so it wouldn't bother me.
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Same here on the flap noise. And I have this unfortunate memory of Nights in White Satin coming on, and droning on and on and on and on . . . . . . and on, when we had the radio playing for a certain amount of time before sleep and it shut is self off. Can you tell that is not my favorite song?
 
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I use my TV as an alarm clock. It's less jarring waking up that way. I have an LED alarm clock that I use for a backup in case I doze off while the TV is on. I also have a clock that projects the time and indoor/outdoor temperature on the ceiling.
 
I had an uncle who worked for Westclox back in the sixties. Visiting one day, I saw one of the new models on a table and I was mesmorized, the first digital I'd ever seen. Instead of the flipping cards thing, the numbers were just a rolling drum with numbers on each. He bought me one for Christmas. I was nine, a total geek.
This is the only one I could find that close to it.
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But by far the coolest digital clocks to me anyway and I'd still love to own one, are the Nixie tube digitals. You can buy 'em in kits to build yourself, but even they're stupid expensive because Nixie tubes were phased out here in the US decades ago and replaced by LEDs. They stayed in use in Soviet parts of Russia and eastern European countries, and that's the only part of the world you can find them.
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Steverino said:
But by far the coolest digital clocks to me anyway and I'd still love to own one, are the Nixie tube digitals. You can buy 'em in kits to build yourself, but even they're stupid expensive because Nixie tubes were phased out here in the US decades ago and replaced by LEDs. They stayed in use in Soviet parts of Russia and eastern European countries, and that's the only part of the world you can find them.
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the light from that thing would keep me awake.
 
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