The heiroglyphs are Middle Egyptian glyphs. They mean "Cause to die," in English.

Contents 1 Destroyed countdown timer 2 silly question 3 B.F. Skinner 4 Destroyed Timer 5 Article rewrite 6 Other hieroglyphs 7 109 minutes 8 Merge?

Destroyed countdown timerEdit

Does not happen "after a system failure", it seems to take a couple of minutes before the EMP crushes it.НародныйАртист 19:37, 11 June 2006 (PDT)

silly question Edit

This may be a silly question, but how did you figure that out?

'Cause we got a little bit of information on the bottom of this article :-) Should probably edit this article to reflect that... --Jambalaya 14:53, 16 February 2006 (PST)

Or maybe this article is a bit redundant... --Jambalaya 14:59, 16 February 2006 (PST)

B.F. Skinner Edit

The countdown timer looks a bit like a machine in this Time magazine cover on B.F. Skinner - a behavorist. Thoughts? http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101710920,00.html

It looks a lot like this, yes. It even has three plus two digits and the three having a different color than the two. Maybe add the link or even the image to article on BF Skinner? --aurora glacialis 08:53, 11 March 2006 (PST)

Destroyed Timer Edit

Can anyone add a shot of the destroyed timer? Would be cool.--Bremerton 06:15, 26 May 2006 (PDT)

Article rewriteEdit

Hi all, I've just finished a major rewrite cycle of the article. If you have any further suggestions, please let me know. Thanks-- 07:35, 11 November 2006 (PST)

Other hieroglyphs Edit

Some other hieroglyphs can be seen on the counter just befor it is destroyed. Though they are probably not important ;-) See the pictures grabed from the episode 23 live together die alone. http://www.lostpedia.com/images/e/e0/Counter01.jpg http://www.lostpedia.com/images/e/e0/Counter02.jpg http://www.lostpedia.com/images/e/e0/Counter03.jpg—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Patrixon (talk • contribs) .

Yes, I saw at least 4 new hieroglyphs too. But your first two links redirect to Main Page.- Kemot from Poland 06:15, 21 March 2007 (PDT)

109 minutesEdit

Although people often misunderstand the countdown process, the countdown actually takes 109 minutes since the timer displays the number 108 for a full minute. This means when it switches to 107 1 minutes has just gone by, at 106 it is 2 minutes, and so on until it displays 0 and 108 minutes but there is still the sixty seconds where the one's minute's place is zero. So the timer could theoretically be reset every 109 minutes and not 108 minutes.

• First, it's still called a 108-minute timer, no matter how you do the math. Second, your math is incorrect. When the clock turns to "2", 106 minutes have passed; when it says "1", 107 minutes have passed; when it says "0" the timer is over. Sure, there is some action that happens afterwards, but the timer is over...at 108 minutes. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 23:32, 18 March 2007 (PDT)
• It's not clear if it's actually a 108 minute timer or a 109 minute timer. There are two scenarios for what the minute reading on the timer means prior to the 4 minute mark: Rounded up and rounded down. Rounded up means that the timer would display 108 minutes from 108 minutes remaining to 107 minutes, 1 second remaining. This would be a true 108 minute timer. Rounded down would mean that the timer would display 108 from 108 minutes, 59 seconds to 108 minutes, 0 seconds. This would be a 109 minute timer. We could know which one it is based on footage of the timer immediately prior to the clock hitting the 4 minute mark. A round up timer (108 minute) would display 5:00 from 5 minutes to 4 minutes, 1 second, then display 4:00 for 1 second, then flip to 3:59. A round down timer (109 minute) would display 4:00 for a full minute (from 4 minutes 59 seconds, to 4 minutes) before flipping to 3:59. I'm not sure if footage of either event occurring is in the show or not, though. Shawn4168 20:20, June 4, 2010 (UTC)

Merge? Edit

Much of this same content is over at Push_the_Button. I like the way this article is organized, with separate headings for different failure sequences, for example. But some of the material in this article could still be cleaned up, like combining content from "The countdown function" section with "Normal operation", and moving the note about the significance of "108" somewhere else in the page. Perhaps what we could do is keep this article focused on the actual timer, and move content about resetting the timer over to Push the Button (that article needs better organization anyway). -- Graft   talk   contributions  23:17, 12 October 2007 (PDT)