Who came up with this idea?
I assume this time system, which appears to be pretty arbitrary, has been imposed upon the world. What were Asian countries using before adopting the 24-hour clock? When did, say, Japan adopt it?
Has anybody seriously considered a metric clock? Was it considered by the French revolutionaries who developed the metric system and reset the calendar?
RK
Sure enough, the French had a ten-hour, 100,000 second day. I have seen a few pictures of ten-hour clocks, but unfortunately I can’t find one.
Curiously enough, Fritz Lang chose to incorporate the idea into his film Metropolis.
The French calandar also had twelve months of 30 days each, followed by 5 or 6 additional days sprinkled throughout to make it 365 or 366 days. Each month was divided into three weeks of ten days each, which was a very unpopular idea because only one day in ten was considered a “rest” day as Sunday is in the traditional system.
A metric second is 0.864 regular seconds.
I always prefered the Discordian calendar, which has five months of 73 days each, and one leap-day.
Here is everything you want to know about time.
For example:
I had heard that the 24 hour clock came first and the 12 hour clock came later when mechanical clocks became the norm. (As James Burke said when refering to Big Ben “Can you imagine striking 24 on one of these?”)