Inattentive users, users facing intervening atmospheric conditions, and users with uncorrected vision problems, such as myopia, may have difficulty correctly reading the time presented by prior art devices and displays.
Prior art devices and displays include digital representations that may present a digital format of a one- or two-digit hour and a two-digit minute, e.g. 12:34 or 2:45. Such representations are very poor at addressing the above problems. They may suffer from misinterpretation of the digits, especially when viewed by individuals with uncorrected vision problems, such as myopia. Misinterpretation may result from commonly confused numeral pairs, examples of which are listed below:                3 vs. 8        1 vs. 7        5 vs. 6        4 vs. 9        
Prior art devices and displays include representations where the hour or minute is represented in an “analog”, or continuous, manner. Such devices may present two hands of, for example, simple rectangular or linear shapes, or other shapes (e.g., an hour hand and a minute hand; possibly with the addition of a second hand). While the hands may have decorative details, the hands retain a generally rectangular or oblong shape. Prior art includes a traditional clock face, an example of which is shown in FIG. 1 (showing thirty-eight minutes after four o'clock), which may suffer from the following problems, especially when viewed by individuals with uncorrected vision problems such as myopia. The problems are listed in order of the severity of the resultant error in time measurement:                a. confusion between the hour and minute hands        b. misinterpretation of the position of the hour hand        c. misinterpretation of the position of the minute hand        
Prior art devices and displays include a timepiece that displays the minutes in the manner of a pie chart and thus leaves a misleading and meaningless edge at the twelve o'clock position and also fails to present the hour in a consistent or analog manner, either using a illuminated hour marker or a color choice that encodes the hour in an unfamiliar way. The hour is not itself included in the pie chart.
Prior art displays may show sunrise or sunset in the manner of, for example, a pie chart that leaves a misleading and meaningless edge at the twelve o'clock position and also fails to prioritize and make prominent the most important function, that of indicating the current time.
One prior art display includes a timepiece that uses a time-invariant spiral to indicate the minutes. A related prior art device likewise uses fixed graphical, filled, monochrome spiral that does not originate at zero but requires a third color to perform the functions of indicating hours and minutes.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds