Windows 8 Apps - The UneQual Hours Clock

"Clock for time travellers!"

The UQH Clock application for Windows 8 comes with a rich alarm and timer functionalities, real-time Tile-Clock - and so much more ! It offers a unique feature of the medieval time tracking - let's get closer to the sweet particulars and get befriended with a more natural concept of the time !

Live Time-tile variations with the date, the unequal hours and the sunset and sunrise times

In ancient and medieval era's people did not have hours of fixed length like we do today. Instead, they divided the day and night into twelve portions of twelve hours, identified by the position of the sun in the sky or the length of a burning candle in the night. Thus the length of the hour varied between the longer days of summer and shorter ones of winter. They often referred to these hours with specific names, alternating from region to region. That’s why, in medieval texts, one could easily find references like “we are in the third quarter of the first hour,” or “it was the Hour of the Owl.”

This is what the name of our app is rooted in: the traditional (and more natural) way of tracking time results in unequal hours, more precisely in time periods which are adopted to the given circumstances, always adjusting themselves accordingly to the current length of the day and night cycles. 


The text clock version of the Medieval Clock

The time-travel clock

The standard and the medieval clock next to each other. Follow and see the difference between the seconds ! (In the winter the days are shorter, so are the hours and the seconds, as well ! It means that in the middle of the main screen you can whitness for yourself the two clocks next to each other – the seconds on the medieval one will flow slower than that of the standard one ).

This way you will always know how much time remains from the day and night hours, as well as be informed about their proportions. To give you an example: If you peek at the clock and it says “1st quarter of the 6th hour in the day”, you will immediately know (since there are twelve hours in the day or night) that you spent half of the day, from which six hours are remaining.

The Quarters

Since minutes were not used as a measurement of time during the high middle Ages, they counted in "quarter-hours," as do ourselves in this application. Do not miss the mind-blowing consequences of the inequality: these quarter hours (as the hours themselves) represent different time sections in different periods of the year!

The real-time Clocks

The standard and the medieval clock next to each other. Follow and see the difference between the seconds !

 The application will tell you what quarter of what hour you are in, it will inform you about the length of the day or the night, and it calculates the sunrise and sunset based on the location of your device. (The UQH Clock doesn’t use an internet connection, thus your sensitive personal information are perfectly safe.) Based on the results, it displays for you the length of the day or night hours and quarters, along with additional information and measurements.


The medieval “graphical” clock-circle (Main-page element and fullscreen version)



The medieval "graphical clock" (Page and full-screen version)

 

 

This block displays the UQH time (Day/Night) in real-time. This version of the UQH Clock counts in quarters and in ordinal format. (Example: “7th Hour and 3rd quarter of the Day” means that we are in the third quarter of the seventh hour since sunrise (or in other words six hours and two quarters had passed since then).

How to read it ?

The circle is a medieval map of the universe (with the Earth in the middle and the Sun as a third planet). We have modified and used it as a background for an authentical medieval clock. To find out the time simply look at the innermost circle enlisting the quarters in latin as following: primus (quadrans) – first quarter, secundus (quadrans) – second quarter, tertius (quadrans) – third quarter, quartus (quadrans) – fourth quarter. You will see the current quarter highlighted in red. As for the hours the second cirlce exhibits 12 digits – the present hour is highlighted in red as well.




The medieval layout of the Windows 8 clock tile app (More layouts coming soon !)

 

 Naturally, it has a standard clock as well as rich alarm and timer functionalities; additionally, it offers two real time clocks: the medieval and the standard next to each other. You might witness how the seconds are shorter in the winter, and how the minutes are prolonged in the summer. The unique real-time version of the medieval clock measures the time in minutes, as does ours, instead of quarters. We present it in a “Text Clock” format as well.


Updates: Updates are scheduled for every week. Besides the general maintenance, they are going to offer more themes, colors and options - such as new layouts for the medieval clocks and responses to the user requests.

Download: You can try and download the app from the Windos Store by following this link !

Questions and informations: codesign@outlook.com or here in the comments !

More Images of the recent version: