Questions and answers
What this site is, who pays for it, what happens to what you type, and what to do when a tool gets something wrong.
Is it really free?
Yes, and there is nothing to sign up to. No account, no email address, no trial that turns into a subscription. Every tool on the site works the moment you open it.
Then how is it paid for?
At the moment it is not — there are no adverts on this site. Advertising is the likely answer, kept as light as it can be and out of the way of what you came to do. Exactly how that works is not settled yet, and this page will say so plainly when it is.
That is the whole of the business model. No accounts, no newsletter, nothing collected and nothing to sell. A site that costs little to run does not need to take much from the people using it.
Will anything ever cost money?
Possibly, and only where a tool genuinely costs something to run. Anything that needs real processing time or storage — handling a file you upload, say — costs money every time somebody uses it, and a free service that quietly runs out of money helps nobody.
If that happens the likely answer is a daily limit on how many times a tool can be used, or a small one-off charge for the heavy part. It would apply to that tool alone. The ones already here stay free.
What happens to what I type?
Most tools here send nothing at all: the calculation runs on your own machine, so there is nothing to send. Where a tool does send something out, that page says so and names where it goes, and the privacy page lists every one."privacy.html">privacy page lists them and is checked automatically against the site's own code.
Who is behind it?
One person, in the United Kingdom. There is one email address and it is read: hello@showtheworking.com.
A tool gave me the wrong answer.
Please tell us, and please include what you typed and what you believe the right answer is. A specific example is worth far more than a general report, because it can be turned into a permanent test that stops the same mistake returning. Several corrections on this site arrived exactly that way. See contact.
Why do some tools refuse to give a single answer?
Because the source does not support one. A good many serial number schemes are ambiguous — the same number can mean two different years, and the manufacturer's own chart says so. Sites that print one confident year are choosing for you without saying they have chosen.
Where two readings exist, both are shown, with the reasoning. That is what the name of the site means.
Why is some data missing?
Usually because nobody may publish it. A number of makers restrict what can be reproduced from their site, and where their terms say no, or cannot be read at all, nothing is taken — the page says what is missing and sends you to whoever holds it.
Sometimes the data simply does not exist: no government publishes counts of names given to fewer than a handful of babies, and most watch makers publish no dating table at all. Where that is the answer, the page says so rather than guessing. The name index has the fullest account of this anywhere on the site: what the name data leaves out.