![clockwise vs counterclockwise clockwise vs counterclockwise](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/95W9K1oFSk0/maxresdefault.jpg)
1882 in Uniplanar Kinematics of Solids and Fluids by George Minchin, an Irish-born scientist in London.So, searching 12 pages into the results, I've found a few cases of counter(-)clock(-)wise antedating: Search for counterclockwise in 19th century books, and you'll find that a lot of books that Google Books thinks were published in the 19th century weren't. Do you know what? Google Books is a pain. Merriam-Webster has a first attestation date of 1879 for anticlockwise, but doesn't give the source. These entries have not been updated in a long, long time and the OED's use of American sources was pretty limited in the early years.
![clockwise vs counterclockwise clockwise vs counterclockwise](http://www.differencebetween.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Clockwise-vs-Counterclockwise.jpg)
But should we trust the OED on this one? Probably not. Their first for anti-clockwise is from 1898. The OED's first instance of counter-clockwise is in the same quote as the clock-wise one, from the Times (of London). It's not so clear that their origins really were in different countries, though.
#Clockwise vs counterclockwise free#
This tells us that its opposite is a good bet for transatlantic differences: the British colonists could not have taken it to America, so each nation was free to come up with its own version. So why do we have different words for going in a circle as if going backward(s) on a clock? The earliest instance of clockwise in the OED is from 1888 (and it's clock-wise, adding all sorts of hyphenation possibilities).
#Clockwise vs counterclockwise how to#
So for the inventors of trigonometry there was probably no choice but to count argument counterclockwise.I had to take/make a decision on how to hyphenate the title of this post-it could have beenīut I went with (BrE) anti-clockwiseand (AmE) counterclockwise because, as we've seen before, Americans are a bit more apt to close up prefixed words when given the chance requested this one as a Twitter 'Difference of the Day', but since it's been a month since my last post (shock! horror! marking/grading!), I'm easing myself back into blogging with something that can't get too out-of-hand, I hope. Of course I understand that these are not original pictures, but it is hard to imagine that the original pictures looked differently. Choosing the other direction in trigonometry as positive would be extremely inconvenient for the main purpose of it.ĮDIT All pictures illustrating Ptolemy are made with Sun, Moon and planets movingĬounterclockwise (as they actually move with respect to the fixed stars, as seen from the Northern hemisphere). In particular trigonometry was invented and developed for the needs of astronomy. So positive direction is counter-clockwise.Īs mathematics was always closely connected to astronomy (well, until 20s century), it was natural for mathematicians to take the same direction of rotation as positive. (Planets sometimes "retrograde" but they retrograde with respect to this positive, natural direction). As all they move generally in the same direction (opposite to the direction of the daily rotation), this direction was traditionally called "positive" or "forward" in astronomy. However interesting astronomy begins when you start to appreciate and describe the slower motions than the daily rotation: the progress of the planets, Sun and Moon with respect to the "fixed" stars.
![clockwise vs counterclockwise clockwise vs counterclockwise](https://whatmaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Clockwise-and-counterclockwise-rotation.png)
This determines the clockwise direction, as the time was always measured by the Sun. If you observe from Northern hemisphere, the sky rotates about you clockwise (East to West). It so happened that in the ancient times astronomy was mostly practiced in the Northern hemisphere. I suppose that all these notions and terminology come from the early astronomy. (Although I've wondered this a long time, this posting was triggeredīy the MESE posting, " Why do we conventionally treat trig functions as going anti-clockwise from the right?.") Likely the answer to Q2 depends on nationality/culture. Are there data on how we mentally view the annual calendar advancing-linearly: L/R, R/L, circularly: cw, ccw? Where did the mathematician's ccw convention originate, and where did the clockwise convention originate, and why are they opposite one another? I learned when making a presentation to random people (faculty) that many (most?) view the annual
![clockwise vs counterclockwise clockwise vs counterclockwise](https://www.mathematics-monster.com/images6/rotation_clockwise_and_counter-clockwise.jpg)
I myself, as a mathematician, view the annual calendar as advancingĬcw-summer South, fall East, Christmas North-but On the other hand, non-mathematicians are exposed to cw advancement as increasing time in all(?) analog clocks,Īnd so for many of them, cw is the natural sense of positive angular advance. The right-hand-rule rules such coordinate systems. To $90^\circ$ along the positive $y$-axis (North), sweeping out the first (NE) quadrant of It is common for mathematicians to use counterclockwise (ccw) as positive, andįor example, trigonometric functions increase from $0^\circ$ along the positive $x$-axis (East)