Why would two people want to synchronize their watches?

Answer 1

In situations where external reference to the current local time may not be easy, or impossible, and if two people agree to meet at a certain time at a certain place, or both plan to do something at the same time as each other, then it would be important to at least agree on what the time is now, by reference to acommon agreed time, one person having to adjust his watch to the time on the other person's watch.

In this way, and assuming both watches are running at the same speed, then a planned 'joint-action' will take place at the same time.

For example, they will both be 'at the bus stop by the lake' at the same time, and will thus avoid missing each other. Even if their watches are 'wrong' in comparison with local time, at least the duration between the moment of synchonization and the agreed interval and the future meeting 'moment' will the same for both parties.

Or maybe two or more people have planned a joint action that needs to be done simultaneously at some near-future moment, but in a situation where they will not be in communication with each other physically. Then, by all of them agreeing between themselveswhat the time is, then the planned future 'combined' action will all take place at the same moment, each person using their own watch as a common point of reference.

COMMUNICATION AGE: In this technologically advanced 'communication' age, reference to accurate time is often relatively easy (mobile phones, telephones, radio, 'radio-controlled' watches, etc), but in the past it was not always so easy. In the absense of knowledge of the 'real' time people had to make other arrangements in order to achieve a time-specific and place-specific 'co-incidence'.

NOVELS depicted events set in time periods prior to the present state of relative ease of access to knowledge of the precise time might depict its characters 'synchronizing their watches' before separating, doing so in order to be reasonably sure of meeting again soon at the agreed time and place without either party being unacceptably late or early simply because their watches told different times from each other.