Spoiler alert: useless facts coming... I always set my clock alarms for 1 past the hour, such as 4:01 today. Why? Because snooze is 9 minutes and I can get up at 4:10. But, have you ever wondered WHY snooze is 9 minutes? Several of us chatted about this today, which led to some quick research. Here is the answer: By setting the snooze time to 9 minutes, modern digital alarm clocks only needs to watch the last digit of the time. So, if you hit snooze at 6:45, the alarm goes off again when the last digit hits 4 - at 7:54. They couldnt make the snooze period 10 minutes, or the alarm would go off right away - or the clock would take more circuitry. Historically speaking, theres another element to the answer. Clock experts say when snooze alarms were invented, the gears in alarm clocks were standardized. The snooze gear was introduced into the existing mix and its teeth had to mesh with the other gears teeth. The engineers had to choose between a gear that made the snooze period nine-plus minutes or 10-plus minutes. Because of the gear configuration, 10 minutes on the nose was not an option. According to these clock historians, engineers chose the shorter snooze, figuring less than 10 minutes seemed more punctual and marketable than sending people back to dreamland for more than 10 minutes. The public became accustomed to this, and clock makers have generally stuck with it.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 18:42:09 +0000