They were popular in the 1970‘s: clocks with flipping numbers. These digital indicators of time no longer had minute and hour hands. Instead, they had small cards with half of a number printed on the front and back. The upper flap would be released every minute and flip downward, revealing the next number. These clocks were not better than the ones with hands, yet they seemed to be more precise because they expressly showed each and every minute.
The first clocks with flipping numbers could be purchased as early as 1894. The German Journal for Clock-Makers [Deutsche Uhrmacherzeitung] described the attendant change in the perception of time: “It is suited, after all, for educating the greater public […] toward a more precise reading of the time; for if a Pallweber movement indicates 10 o’clock and 4 minutes or 10 o’clock and 47 minutes, no one […] will say, ‘It is five minutes past 10 o’clock,’ or ‘It is a quarter to 11’, as is nearly always the case when the time is read from the usual dials.”
Table clock with flipping numbers, according to a patent by the Pallweber A.G. for Clock Manufacturing [Pallweber, A.G. für Uhrenfabrikation], Lenzkirch, c. 1894, Inv. 2014-091