Alarm Clock Snooze

Smart phones have a built in snooze for about nine minutes. There is an interesting reason for this. Clock experts say when snooze alarms were invented during the 1950s; the gears in alarm clocks were standardized.


When the snooze gear was introduced, its gears needed to mesh with the existing gears. The engineers needed to choose between a gear that made the snooze period nine-plus minutes or ten-plus minutes and opted for nine. There was no scientific reason for this time period. It was purely mechanical, just as it is with railroad tracks, but that is another story. There are no scientific papers published on benefits or detriments to using the snooze, but there are many opinions for and against. Fortunately modern technology allows us to use it or not and to change the snooze time as we choose.

Incidentally, snooze means sleeping for a short period of time.