Most of us here in the United States (that are not of the Jurassic age demographic) have but one point of reference when it comes to sand filled hour glasses. For over 40 years, one of the longest running television shows in history opens with a slow camera zoom on an hour glass ticking away your daily wasted hour of mind numbing melodrama. The voice over is one of the most famous lines ever written for mass media; “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.” That’s it! Aside from the occasional egg-timer sighting or Flintstones episode, society has moved way beyond need for one of the most ancient of technologies, the sand filled hour glass. Designer Pavel Balykin believes this very retro timepiece is on schedule for a comeback. It’s fittingly called the “Sand+Time Watch” and has the distinct feature of a digital hour glass screen saver mode. It’s a “screen saver” mode, because this particular feature does not actually count time for you. If you want to know the real time, click a button and a more modern interpretation of time, we like to call “numbers”, will appear. Add a motion sensor, like the one used in Apple’s iPhone, and this screen saver mode might get that extra little cool factor to push it into production. What do you think?

Designer: Pavel Balykin