Talk:Chess clock

Reference to LEDs

LED's contain significant amounts of power ... this seems inaccurate. LEDs are quite efficient wrt to power.

I believe the text about the Fischer clock is inaccurate, but I don't have a source to prove it. As I remember, Fischer's patent was not for adding time to each player's store of time on each move. A player could not end a move with more time than before the move, because Fischer didn't want the players to have any incentive to move excessively quickly. Thus if the time control allowed the players 30 seconds per move, their clocks would simply not move for the first thirty seconds of thinking time, and only begin to tick down after that. Moving in 1 second or moving in 29 seconds would have exactly the same effect, i.e. no change in one's clock, so one might as well take 29 seconds.

Peace, --Fritzlein 19:00, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You are mistaken: see the patent itself at [1]. The part that makes it clearest, I think, is about half way down:

As an example of the present method, one may select an initial time period of 62 minutes (60 minutes plus the first two minutes which is credited prior to the first move) for each player. Each player's clock is preset to give a 62-minute time period for the entire game. Then, a time interval such as 2 minutes is selected. Assuming that the first player takes 10 seconds for his first move, he will have 61 minutes and 50 seconds remaining from his initial 62-minute time period. Upon completion of his first move, the preselected 2-minute interval will be added to the first player's time, thus giving him a total of 63 minutes and 50 seconds remaining on his clock. The same procedure is repeated for the second player and then the first player makes his second move. Assuming that the first player's second move takes 45 seconds, his clock will have 63 minutes and 5 seconds remaining. Again, upon completion of his second move, the 2-minute interval will be added to the first player's time to give him 65 minutes and 5 seconds for the remainder of the game.

I have seen what you're talking about--where the added time is not accumulated from one move to the next, but rahter acts as a sort of delay--described as the "Botvinnik" system, though I've never seen anything definite about Botvinnik proposing it. --Camembert

Merge Digital chess clock into Game clock?

Yes, definitely. The existing Digital chess clock, while worth keeping, is completely out of place when the more mainstream issues of digital clocks (especially the Fischer clock) are already in the Game clock article. So I propose that the current text of Digital chess clock should becomes a section in Game clock called something like "Early digital game clocks". And Digital chess clock should become a redirect to Game clock. Rocksong 03:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd support the merge as that content is not big enough to merit an article of its own, particularly because it also talks about analog clocks and variations, which should be here rather than there. However, if the section of this article does become informative enough for a new article (which I think is plausible), we should recreate. Fetofs ^Hello! 12:53, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've finally merged things. I re-ordered the paragraphs and added sections, but review by another editor would be helpful.--Kchase02 T 19:37, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Five Minute Clocks

In the late 1970s, and through the 1980s, there were chess clocks whose dials were circular, but whose minute hands would make a complete revolution of 360 degrees in five minutes; the second hands, if there were any, were nothing more than little sprockets that rotated quickly at the top of the dial. As I remember, these were invariably imported from Germany. The last time I bought one, was sometime around 1989, and it cost me upwards of $100 US dollars.

Did they get driven out of business with the advent of the digital chess clocks?