Smartphones can not only play music and help you locate the next restaurant, they also perform more banal tasks like waking you up in the morning. It is common for people to be dragged from their sleep to the electronic sound of their mobile ring tone.
That raises the question of whether the ordinary alarm clock should be put on the list of endangered species. After all, the desktop computer put paid to the typewriter. Is it time for the bedside clock to sound its last post?
German appliance manufacturer Braun no longer lists alarm clocks in its range of products online. Its classic analogue clock has been licensed to other manufacturers since last year and is now being marketed by a British company. What led to this development?
“That business no longer belongs to our core activities,” says Braun spokesman, Lars Atorf, who also stresses that shoppers can still buy the clock in the shops. Atorf believes that alarm clocks will eventually give way to the age of the mobile phone.
Braun’s analogue clock can be found in the catalog of Manufactum, a company that specializes in selling classic design items. Manufactum also has a mechanical clock that retails for 364 dollars. The silver, round alarm clock is made by a small firm in Switzerland called Looping and is based on a 1932 design.
According to the catalog description, it is “a product of serious clockmaking” and has a secure place in our digital age.
“It’s a very popular mechanical clock,” says Looping’s owner Edgar Sutter who points out that a spring-driven clock can be repaired by any watchmaker if something goes wrong. “But they can’t help when your quartz clock is broken.”
Sutter bought Looping in 1982 after it went bankrupt and turned it into a success story. Its order books are full for another…