Stake Your Claim

In the early 1990s, an ad for a digital clock called “Timisis” was touted as a “perfect gift idea.” This is a digital clock that does more than merely tell time or wake you up. By punching in your age and your gender, it continually reminds you of how much longer you can expect to live. And it displays your remaining time (based on life-expectancy tables) in hours, minutes, and seconds. “An average lifetime lasts 678,900 hours or 2.4 billion seconds.” says the Timisis ad. “How much of that time do you have left? Well, Timisis will tell you right down to the last second.”

Commenting on the product, a Chicago syndicated newspaper columnist wrote that he had a similar idea years earlier …

“It was when I realized that every morning, I would wake up, sit on the edge of the bed and stare at my feet for about 20 seconds. I figured out how many seconds a year I spent mindlessly staring at…