How People Who Are Blind Can Tell The Time Using This Watch
The watch, which was created in 2013, works through the power of magnets. (Photo: reddit/slendermanswife)
The people of Reddit were wondering on Friday how this magnetic watch (an image of which was posted on imgur) works to help people who are vision-impaired to tell the time.
One commenter asked:
How does this work? Does a small magnet rotate around the watch during that day or am I missing some obvious physical phenomenon that makes this watch work?
Turns out, it was actually created by MIT alum Hyungsoo Kim, who began working on the watch in 2011. The watch, launched by Kim’s company Eone Timepieces, debuted in 2013 thanks to funding from Kickstarter. It costs between $275 and $315, depending on the style.
Users can tell the time by touching the watch, which has two ball bearings — one for the minutes, one for the hours. The ball bearing for the minutes is on top of the watch, while the ball bearing for the hours is on the side of the watch.
The watch’s Kickstarter page explains the science of how it works:
These two ball bearings are connected, with magnets, to a watch movement beneath the watch face.The magnets make it so that even if the ball bearings are moved when touched, they spring back to the correct time with a gentle shake of your wrist.
The name of the watch is “The Bradley,” after U.S. Navy lieutenant Bradley Snyder who lost his sight after an IED explosion in Afghanistan, reports Slice of MIT. Snyder went on to win gold and silver medals in the 2012 Paralympics.
“I remember the caliber of the college projects I worked on, so my expectations weren’t very high when he [Kim] told me about the watch,” Snyder told The Boston Globe in 2013. “But the first time I put it on, I was blown away.”
Related: What It’s Like To Go Blind
“The Bradley” isn’t the only watch that can help the vision-impaired tell time. According to the National Federation of the Blind, there are other clocks and timepieces that can “talk,” letting the person hear the time, as well as watches that have Braille dots where the hours are on the face of the watch.
It’s hard to say exactly how many people are blind in the U.S., since the definition of blindness may differ depending on who you ask. The definition of “legally blind” is having a central visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better-seeing eye. According to the National Federation of the Blind, 6.67 million adults in the U.S. had a visual disability in 2012.
h/t Reddit
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