Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

Yo, to all of those folks trying to figure out new watch designs. The clock face has been figured out. Turns out if you set the diameter of the circle of your watch face to the same length as the side length of a square that encompases the circle, then divide the square into a 6×6 grid you get a nice looking division into 12 segments. That is, where the grid crosses the circle you mark off the segments. Those 12 segments have worked pretty well for divvying up the time as us humans see it.

So anything from swatch’s internet time (not even deserving a direct a href=” link) to Nooka watches ain’t really giving the world anything beneficial. Now style, I suppose is a different question. Perhaps if you search for internet time, you will find a small cadre of users spanning the globe from Uganda to Utica, NY who measure time in a decimal system waiting for the revolution to come. But it prolly won’t. There are (2 PI radians) 360 degrees in a circle for good reason.

</rant class=’pointless’>

[edit 2005-12-16]

From themodelmakersresource.co.uk:

Another useful circle splitting procedure uses a pair of compasses to split the circle into 6:

Set the compasses to the radius of the circle. Now choose a point on the circumference and put the point of the compasses on your chosen point and mark two more points on the circumference by rotating the compasses. Now move the point to of the compasses to one of your marks and mark a further 2 points. You will notice that one of these marks is over the place where the point of the compasses was last time. Continue around the circle until you have 6 points marked around the circumference.

Joining these up splits the circle into 6. Alternatively you can just join 3 of them to the centre to split the circle into 3 and by employing the same method that you used to split 4 segments into 8 you can split 6 into 12, 24, 48, etc.

So that is different and easier and better since it is a proper construction.