Ora ilLegale clock tips to compensate for daylight savings time
Genius. Pure genius. In order to save us all from smashing buttons on our digital alarm clocks or stripping the gears in our analog ones, designer Denis Guidone has dreamed up this masterpiece. The Ora ilLegale clock boasts no numbers and is obviously missing a significant portion of its base; these two factoids enable it to become the easiest clock to adjust to changes in daylight savings... well, ever. The best part? We're told that it'll actually hit production soon, though there's no indiciation of just how pricey it'll be. Not like it matters -- you're totally buying one, and you know it.
[Via Coolest-Gadgets]
[Via Coolest-Gadgets]

















Very creative, true Genius!
The implications of ones cat accidentally knocking the clock forward or back an hour doesn't bare thinking about.
It's Daylight Saving. Not Savings. No S on the end there. FYI
I'm pretty sure it's 'bear thinking about' not 'bare'.
"Genius" Would be getting rid of DST altogether. DST causes more lateness in employees than illness does. This particular clock also has the problem of having hands. I've met far too many people over the years that cannot read a clock with hands.
@BigD145:
I tell those that can't read "hand" clocks to lrn2analog.
I, too, have met many people who could not read a "hand clock".
Those people were all in kindergarten.
I wouldn't quite call it genius. As Samboini pointed out, there are a hundred things that could accidentally tip this clock over and then *bam*, you're late for work one hour with no excuse. What would be a much better design is if that missing wedge was removable. Since the design is symetrical, you could attach the wedge to either side and then you would have a non-tilting flat base. Of course, you would have to print the ticks on both sides of the wedge.
Yah but there is small flaw which is the time will be 5 minutes off from the original time when the clock is fliped. For example if the time is 9:00 and you flip it to the right, the new time will be 10:05pm. LIke wise if the time is 9:15 and you flip it towards the left, the new time will be 8:10.
Still, quite a good concept though =).
Does it change colors when flipped?
@ BigD145
What kind of uptight company town are you on the manage side of? Daylight saving time gives people a semi-valid excuse to be late once a year. Some of us over-privileged americans need that.
@Tinu
No, if you flip the clock over, it will change one hour. If you look, 6 o'clock will always be at the base. If you change it, it'll either go forward one hour, or backward one hour.
Also, a little foldable stand in each 'base' would help.
@Tinu
Sorry, forgot to mention. It won't change 5 minutes, because it doesn't have the minute hand ;)
I feel hard to count the dail.
Translated chinese is such a nice language, it really makes you think and is so poetic :)
@pirate
I once worked for a hardware store that had only a manager and one employee to open the store in the morning. Things had to be brought out of the front of the store and most things required two people to pick up and move. Being late is not an option if you want to keep your job.
>>Wwhat
are you talking about my name?
I afraid google cannot translate it at all.
people who are late because of dst should be fired anyway...first of all, it's on a saturday every year, so they would have to be such morons that they are an hour late/early for everything 2 days in a row and don't realize it - not to mention that every tv station and show would be showing the real time - and second of all, most modern devices (computers, cell phones, etc) auto correct the time for you
on a different note, dst should not be eliminated, standard time should, i prefer not getting out of work when it's dark out and it saves power
"enable it to become the easiest clock to adjust to changes in daylight savings... well, ever."
Surly the easiest ones to change are the Radio controlled ones that change themselves?
the only reason I even clicked "comments" was to see if someone had already put one about the auto-set out there.
bravo.
No, the easiest ones are the ones here in Arizona WHERE THEY DON'T CHANGE. As it is, it's often 100+˚ at 10pm, why would we want it to be hot another hour?
I never have to set my clock here in Hawaii, but when daylight savings happens it screws up the mental notes I have to take when I want to watch a certain show on tv.
"Okay new Man vs Wild at 8pm, that means 6pm."
*Tunes into the discovery channel at 6pm*
*Realizes daylight savings happened and Man vs Wild was on at 5*
WAUUGH
@Lazarpandar
yeah, that was really crappy when i lived in Indiana, then we finally began observing DST and didnt have to switch between Central and Eastern time zones anymore.
That is single handedly the most clever thing I have ever seen.
I would wholeheartedly disagree. Clever, but it gets one upped by many, many other objects.
Sliced bread, for instance.
It's a little cool, but what's with all the superlative?
indoor plumbing ftw.
also, i live in an area where DST is no observed. this clock is usesless to me. (saskatchewan)
This is pretty slick. Only problem is what about not perfectly leveled surfaces, carpets etc?
If it's not super expensive it could be a good talking piece though.
It's not balanced on a pin. It sits on a flat surface, if you can't balance it on something, a normal clock wouldn't work there either.
Too bad it's ugly.
too bad your ugly
Oh it doesn't automatically tilt itself? Not as cool.
Unfortunately, when you spring ahead or fall back, your clock becomes 5 minutes fast or slow (respectively). Not a major inconvenience, but it does take away some of the cool factor.
They could sold this by putting a slick digital minute display on the clock and just leave the hour hand.
Won't you be setting it back like... 1 hour and 5 minutes?
Nope. Doesnt have a minute hand...
Sure sacrificed a lot of regular clock features to avoid having to adjust the time twice a year...
Getting rid of the minute hand sounds like something Steve Jobs would do.
Lame!
You don't lose 5 minutes.
There are no numbers on it for that reason alone ; ) The line at the top is 12, no matter which way it's tilted.
actually, you do
the hour hand moves back 1/12th of the clock face, or, and hour.
But at the same time, the minute hand is going to move back aswell, again, 1/1th of the clock face. Thats means it goes back an extra 5 minutes
sorry for the double post, but just look at the image they've given.
The hands are in the same place on both clocs (Except the clocks are tilted differently)
But the black clock shows a time of quarter to nine (incorrectly might i add, because the hour hand is in the wrong position for that)
The white clock on the other hand shows a time on ten to ten (again, incorrectly, the hour hand shouldn't be dead on 10)
So yeah, the difference between the two clocks is 1 hour 5 minutes....
and this isn't really a very functional system
Let's think about that for a moment.
Hour hand and minute hand are both on the 12. It's 12:00. Now tilt the thing for daylight saving. Hour hand and minute hand are both on the 1 now. It's 1:05.
Maybe they could have put the minute hand on a separate mechanism that can swing freely and has a bottom weight to maintain its orientation regardless of the tilt. But that would probably be very complicated to engineer. Instead, it looks like they solved the problem BY GETTING RID OF THE MINUTE HAND!
gah... one final comment.
I didn't notice there was no minute hand, i thought the minute and hour hands where at the same point, either way, it works, just wont be all that accurate when reading it
Nice little piece of art and clever idea; I wouldn't exactly call it brilliant. Not very functional as a clock. For one, there is no minute hand, so not very accurate. There is also the possibility of accidentally changing the time; what if your maid picks it up to dust around it and places it back down the wrong way? I for a change that only happens twice a year, I would think a more "permanent" changing mechanism would be in order.
If I could afford a maid I would have her change all my regular clocks and wouldn't need this one.
As long as you're not all that specific on evenings.
Won't be all that "genius" when they get rid of daylight savings time
They should get rid of the whole DST thing... actually keep it permanently on DST. I hate when it gets dark so early in the evenings during the winter. In the Northern US it's cold, miserable, and dark by the time you get home from the office. Major contributor to SAD's.
I agree. Permanent DST. Besides, I think people are more active when there's more daylight, so maybe that would save some money in the long run on treatment for heart disease and diabetes.
@ckdk and Funke
Did it occur to you that if DST would be permanent in wintwrtimw you would stand up in the middle of the night?
Whats the point in saving one hour of energy in the evening if you are going to use one more in the morning ?
i live in the greater toronto area and the whole daylight saving system works perfectly for me
for most of the year, the sun rises right when i, and about most of my city, is starting to commute to work.
giving the most daylight in the morning, and starting at the right time to have those few minutes in the evening to save energy.
@kilgore
what the hell are you talking about - waking up in the middle of the night? the time only changes by 1 hour
i don't know what you do, maybe you're a farmer or an i-banker, but i get up at 7am year round, and regardless of whether it's daylight saving or standard time, it's light out
How did no one spot the blatant fact the time will be out by 5 minutes before it made production. A long way short of genius.
It wont be out by 5 minutes, since theres only an hour hand and no minute hand, the hour hand will go back an hour, but there is no minute hand to go back by 5 minutes.
I thought the same thing at first
It's a simple, no frills design that is inexpensive to manufacture and sacrifices some functionality for some style. Therefore, it will be incredibly expensive.
OMG it's an iPhone.
(Or any other apple product.)
might as well stick a half-eaten fruit logo on it.
Perhaps if the minute hand was a separate movement that was not fixed to the clock face, but weighted so when the body was tilted it would rotate to keep the correct minute time. This is getting way too complicated for a simple task. Also, it would be completely useless in space, which rules me out of ever owning one. Enjoy your gravity suckers.
Or they could just have a digital display for the minutes
This is the Google of the clock world.
HOT DAMN IT'S A FUCKING CLOCK
WOW .... just Wow!
Here's my 'genius' idea. Forget the hour hand. Minute hand only. No tilting of the clock needed. Or 'pure genius'- remove all hands. I mean as long as the primary goal is to not having to change the time 2 times a year (as opposed to having a useful/readable clock), I think I have them beat. All analog clock factories will be able to use my method, and will actually be cheaper than the twice-a-year-change-required clocks.
Absolutely fantastic
Move to Arizona, never have to worry about DST again.
Yeah, but then you have to live in Arizona.
Why is it called 'illegale'?
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ora_legale
it's a pun to that expression
Because daylight slaving time should be illegal?
Like ibelike said it is from "ora legale." The literal translation of "ora legale" is "legal time" (Italian DST), so it a pun on that.
I never understood the stupidity that is the reason behind DST.
Some candle-maker pissed off Ben Franklin, so Ben came up with a way to get people to use less candles (by shifting the working hours more into daylight) as a means of punishing the candle-maker. Eventually the candle-maker's business failed, his wife left him, and he hung himself. That Franklin fellow is an evil genius.
FYI... It's Daylight Saving Time... not Daylight Savings Time... drop the 's'... sorry, just a peeve of mine...
"easiest clock to adjust"? Not likely. I've had a travel alarm clock for ~3 years that's hooked up via satellite to an atomic clock in Colorado... it adjusts itself twice a year so I do nothing at all. Now *that* is easy and pure genius!
These literally never work for me. Didn't work when I lived in the Northwest, doesn't work in the CA Bay Area. I've got one sitting on my desk right now, but I have to set it manually.
3 days ago it was off by an hour -- it magically got a time signal, and since I had changed the time for DST instead of the GMT offset, it jumped forward an hour again. Looking at it now, once again, no signal.
What's to 'understand'? Most of us are awake later at night than early in the morning, so in the height of summer, for example, I can be out at night hiking in the Rockies at 11:00 PM with enough light to see (and I couldn't care less about light levels at, say, 5:00 AM 'cause like the majority, I'm asleep). DST allows more easy and safe late night mobility and utility, saves energy since less late night artificial light is needed and more.
So why stop there? Why not move it 6 hours ahead, so it can be daylight clear up until 2AM when the bars let out, so that drunk drivers can get home more safely? Or move it 12 hours ahead, so we don't ever have any night time at all?
Institutionalized self-delusion is not the answer, but then again, there isn't really a problem. Natural day/night cycles and seasons are a good thing. DST is, and always was, a stupid idea, and sheeple who like it are just as atupid.
My cell phone clock is always right. I never have to change it.
Hey, copy editor guy...it's "Daylight Saving"...no "s". We aren't "savings" daylight when we move the clock. :)
It's meant to save energy not time, so you accumulate savings with a s :)
(although it's true the term is without a s, doesn't mean it makes sense though.)
Now please make a digital version of it. What's next, a DST self-adjusting sundial?
We have clocks that automatically adjust to DST. They're called PCs.
holy crap, you gotta be kiddin me, and nobody has ever thought of this, damnit, another invention slip by me again, guys a genius
Why would you buy a clock with no minute hand just to save 10 seconds of time-changing twice a year?
It's analog, I don't do analog clocks, get away from me.
Hmm...good point about the 5-minute thing, but as was mentioned, there doesn't seem to be a minute hand (at least on a second or closer inspection), so it does seem that they've thought of that. Anyway, I like how they've looked at the problem from another angle. My problem, though, would be remembering which side was the DST side and which was not, but probably they have a mark or suggestion for that. I often get momentarily confused in setting various alarm clocks because some use a light as a PM indicator and others use one as an AM indicator; there seems to be no standard. Anyway, cool clock, and the fact that we're all commenting on it shows that we like ingenuity. I guess we're commenting due to the fact that simply solutions are often the best ones (though perhaps not in this case).
Perhaps the white one is the hours and the black one runs 60 times faster and represent the minutes.
(I'm kidding)
I think this is quite a nice idea, if you take it mostly as art. Would be easy to knock one up with a round cardboard gift box (with minor modifications) and one of those £3 clock kits, which makes me think that the extortionate price tag it'll have won't be worth it.
Dammit! Why didn't I think of that?!
My Sony clock radio has a DST toggle switch. It's simple, and cat-proof.
some people should calm down a little. This is a designer clock, meant to be a conversation piece. It is far more usable than those binary clocks that are also meant more for decoration than utility.
clock smells of IKEA
Dach (~15 posts up): Thank you so much for your kind assessment of my - and hundreds of millions of others' - intelligence level, but you "stop there" because if - as you so brilliantly suggest - you move it six hours ahead, then the problems I mentioned crop up in the morning rather than at night - I'd guess that a little thought on your part might have uncovered that, but if you can't comprehend why this was advantageous in the first place or why it still is, maybe 'thought' isn't yer strong suit...
And thanks for the 'sheeple' assessment too, Dach, but you might wanna consider the fact that not everyone is like you - Thank God - and just because sumptin' don't work fer you, that doesn't mean (millions upon millions of) others don't find advantages and usefulness in both the concept and the execution of DST. Are you an atheist, by the way (I usually hear atheists using the 'sheeple' word)?
However, your '12 hour suggestion' is rather less than brilliant and your assertion that "we don't ever have any night time at all" simply astounds. We aren't changing the laws of physics here and whatever the change or lack, we'll still have the same amount of night. Try a primary school science refresher and you might begin to comprehend.
This many comments for a stupid piece of wood with paint and metal? I have a scrap heap out back in my yard, I'm going to go blog about it.
LOL... Ryan's negative reaction of too many comments elicits action from him to add yet another comment (yeah... that makes sense - Go, Ryan!).
Clever but nothing beats a clock that syncs with the Atomic Clocks in Fort Collins
I just use atomic clocks, they set themselves and I never have to do anything with them after I set them for the first time
wait a second....won't that offset your clock by 5 minutes when you tilt it to account for daylight saving time?
It has no minute hand, so no problems with the DST tilt, but it makes OCD people like me spazz at the potential lack of accuracy