alarm clocks

Because a small piezoelectric transducer is cheaper than two brass bells and a solenoid. The same is true for the ringers in POTS telephones versus modern electronic phones. Even those phones that have a built in loudspeaker (for speakerphone) aren't very loud.

You can buy modern alarm clocks that will wake the deaf (and possibly the dead). I have several friend and customers who need hearing aids. Their houses are full or extra loud doorbells, phones, alarm clocks, smoke alarms, CO alarms, motion detectors, burglar alarms, appliances etc. As a concession to the neighbors, they usually wear cordless headphones while watching TV or listening to the hi-fi. I setup an IFTTT recipe to flash some of their house lights when some trigger wants attention, but nobody seems to like or use it much.

This alarm clock includes a bed shaking vibrator:

Note that "extra loud" is much like chicken eggs, which are sold in supermarkets as large, extra-large and jumbo, where the sizes are relative. Todays extra loud alarm clock is likely to have the same alarm sound level as the older mechanical bell ringers.

I have an old Westclox USA-made wind-up I keep around in case there's a long power-outage. Hasn't been one in recent memory that needed it, though..

looks just like this one, IDK when it was made maybe late 70s or 80s?

I just wound it to make sure it still runs and rings, seems OK. I'll check back tomorrow to see how accurate it is!

Ah, the alarm sounds just like the first one from Pink Floyd's "Time":

I think this is where the Miss Gulch comes riding in on a bicycle. "Digging away, the moments that make up a dull day..."

On a sunny day (Mon, 13 Jun 2022 13:27:55 -0700 (PDT)) it happened RichD <r snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Am testing some Chinse piezo beeper on my home RF motion sensor alarm system Maybe you could solder one (3V) to your alrm clock ;-) Very hard not to notice that beep!

Adding a tiny plastic horn to a piezo can make it massively louder, see any smoke alarm, but no-one wants to spend the extra 5p these days.