Credit: LIAL/Shutterstock.comIn the ’90s, lots of appliances had screens. Because they had screens, appliance makers generally thought they might as well add a clock. So devices like VCRs and microwaves would also display the time—if you bothered to set the clock!
Personally, my memory of the ’90s is replete with screens flashing “12:00” regardless of the actual time. When was the last time you saw something with an incorrect clock? It’s not a thing anymore, for the most part, but in many ways that blinking reminder that your clock needs to be programmed was symbolic of how clunky ’90s tech was.
The blinking 12:00 wasn’t a bug; it was a design compromise
From a modern perspective, you might be wondering why exactly a device with a built-in digital clock would need to be set in the first place, or why it would lose that time setting if the power blips for even a second.
The first is easy enough if you consider that in the ’90s there was no internet in most people’s homes for most of the decade, and even if there were, appliances didn’t connect to it. The only way for your microwave or VCR to know what time it was would be for you to tell it what time it was.
Strictly speaking, RCC (Radio-Controlled Clock) technology did exist, where devices could pull the time from a special radio service, but I’m not aware of this being used in consumer home appliances to any significant degree other than fancy and expensive clock radios and wristwatches.
It also wasn’t common for these devices to have internal batteries that could maintain time while the power was disconnected. It’s not like it wasn’t possible. PCs in the ’90s (and today) had a small battery on their motherboards that prevented settings from being erased and kept the clock going.
I suppose the reason why this was uncommon with home appliances was the added complexity, the need for the battery to be replaced, and the desire to shave costs as much as possible. Whatever the exact reasoning, when the power went out, you got the blinking clock. At least it was a way to know that the power was out while you were away!
Setting the time exposed how hostile VCR interfaces really were
Credit: LIAL/Shutterstock.comNone of this would be particularly PTSD-inducing if it weren’t for the absolutely bonkers process you had to go through to reprogram your VCR or other appliance. Even with the help of the manual, actually getting the time set right was way more confusing and illogical than it needed to be. It also didn’t help that every manufacturer had their own unique way of doing it.
Without the manual, I doubt the average person could figure it out using trial and error alone, though I did actually manage to do that for my grandmother’s VCR in the ’90s when the manual was missing in action.
I still remember how happy I was when we bought a VCR in the year 2000 with a digital menu system. Now you could just use the remote and the OSD on the TV itself to set the time and set recording schedules. It was a huge leap from the technology of just a few years prior.
The blinking clock became a symbol of someone who didn’t understand tech
When I was a kid in the ’90s, walking into someone’s home and seeing every appliance with a clock flashing “12:00” immediately gave me the impression that this was not the home of someone who knew or cared about the technology in their house. Personally, I can’t stand seeing a VCR blinking in the periphery of my vision as I watch TV, so there’s a compulsion to just fix it.
Most people, however, seemed perfectly happy to tune it out, just like some people seem capable of ignoring a smoke alarm or UPS beep, which would drive me up the wall. However, since you could still watch tapes or microwave your food whether the clock worked or not, the incentive wasn’t always there.
Actually, considering I taped a lot of shows on satellite TV, I had an important reason to make sure our VCR clock was set. I guess a lot of people didn’t actually do scheduled recordings and mostly just watched tapes they bought or rented.
In some cases, I can understand simply giving up setting the clocks on your gadgets in the ’90s, because you might have lived somewhere where power cuts were relatively frequent or just in a house where the circuit breaker tripped now and then. Eventually, it just becomes a chore to reset it all.
Modern devices quietly solved the problem by removing user responsibility
Credit: Tim Brookes / How-To GeekI recently bought a new washer-dryer, which can be set to run overnight and finish at a specific time, so your clothes are dry and wrinkle-free just as you get out of bed. I didn’t need to set the time on this machine, because as soon as it connected to my Wi-Fi network, it pulled the current time from a timeserver on the internet.
The same goes for pretty much any other device that needs to know the time these days. Whether via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or some other wireless control system, these devices just get the time themselves, and you don’t have to sweat it. That’s objectively better, but I still get a little nostalgic for the days I’d wake up at 1AM to get a glass of water and watch the clock blink on the microwave as I guzzled it down.
