March 29, 2026
Shape of time, shape of drama
Gonon: Building a Clock with No Numerals
Internet split over a numberless polygon clock—genius or fancy blank watch
TLDR: Gonon replaces numbers with shapes to show time in any orientation, aiming for universal readability. Commenters loved the idea but battled over practicality (8 vs 9), base-10 “hypocrisy,” base-12 dreams, and whether it’s genius minimalism or just a regular watch with the digits shaved off.
A clock with no numbers? Meet Gonon, the geometry-obsessed timepiece that swaps digits for polygons so it works upside down, in mirrors, even in zero gravity. The maker swears by shape-over-symbols and wants to show both the progress of the day and the precise moment. But the comments section? It turned into a geometry cage match. The loudest camp says it’s gorgeous but impractical: one top remark groaned it’s “hard to tell 8 from 9,” with others proposing new symbols or “spiky” shapes to save our sanity. Another camp pounced on the purity police: if you still count in base-10 (decimal), how “culture-free” is this really? One user even claimed Arabic numerals were born from counting angles—cue the fact-checkers rolling in like a new time zone. The duodecimal diehards (base-12 fans) demanded the 12-hour day get a 12-based system, while minimalists threw shade: “Isn’t this just… a normal watch without numbers?” Jokes flew about showing up late because you miscounted a nonagon, and whether this is a “NASA-approved kitchen clock.” Love it or roast it, the clock lit up a real question: do we need numbers, or do we mostly need proportion—that gut sense of where we are in the day?
Key Points
- •The article defines a clock via NIST’s description and highlights the need for a uniform time scale beyond apparent solar time.
- •It distinguishes four layers of time: physics (SI second), astronomical (UT1), civil (UTC with time zones/DST, ISO 8601), and computing (UTC vs monotonic clocks).
- •Design requirements include separating duration from date and using a continuous base like TAI, with civil time as a projection.
- •The concept aims to show time as both linear and cyclic, emphasizing proportion (e.g., progress through the day) alongside precise readouts.
- •“Gonon” encodes digits as polygons (vertex count equals the digit) displayed on six concentric rings for HH:MM:SS, providing orientation-independent time reading.