France had this during Napoleon. How did it work? (Obviously not well) But anyone know how the clock was divided and how that affected weeks etc.
I had a student in one of my freshman biology labs who was a real dim bulb. For one of her project reports, she included a table where she converted all the time elements in the experiment to what she called “metric time units.” I never could figure out what she did (the rest of her report was equally as incomprehensible).
But she probably didn’t know who Napolean was either.
There is a humerous magazine called “The Journal of Irreproduceable Results” that did an article on a modern implementation of a decimal clock. These are the same people who proved that North America would one day be submurged by the weight of National Geographics.
“The large print givith, and the small print taketh away.”
Tom Waites, “Step Right Up”
I think Nappy made a mistake trying to have 20 hours in a metric day. Figure it this way: have 10 hours, each with 100 minutes of 100 seconds. That makes 100,000 seconds in a metric day. Presently there are 86,400 seconds in a day. In other words, a metric second based on a 10-hour day would be 0.864 standard seconds - which is actually CLOSER to what someone who can’t see a clock is likely to call a second (it is almost universal that people count too fast). In essence, we’d be more in tune with our instincts, at least as far as seconds. There are worse ideas one could propose.
millenium is metric time for a thousand years, thats all you need to know .
Swatch is doing something similar to metric time with their “Internet Time”. They divide the day into 1000 “beats”, and each place around the world is always on the same time, eliminating time zones.
The correspondence with “normal” time is that their @000 (start of day) is equal to 00:00 CET (23:00 GMT).
It’s interesting. Personally, I’d love to see it catch on, since I’m having to coordinate phone calls and on-line meetings with folks in Australia occasionally. They’re advertising it at the top of CNN’s home page (click the @xxx notation): http://www.cnn.com/WEATHER/worldtime/ and http://www.swatch.com.
Swatch, nuts! Real men use Greenwich Mean Time!
Of course, some people with no sense of history and a tendency to petty nationalism call it “Coordinated Universal Time” or something equally silly. (What does a Zulu have to do with it?)
And BTW, ;).
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”
rjk: Yeah, you’re 100% right. I’m all in favor of a universal time, be it sponsored by Swatch or the good ol’ GMT. I was just trying to post in the spirit of the OP.
Re: Zulu
Each timezone has an assigned phoenetic alphabet designation. Beginning with Alpha GMT -1:00 and working West around the globe, (skipping the India designation, for the obvious reasons) to Mike [GMT -12:00]. Then, beginning with GMT +1:00 we pick up with November through Yankee. Why they chose a system that puts Zulu between Alpha and November (and puts Mike next to Yankee), I’m not sure.
Stephen
Stephen’s Website
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Many years ago the college radio station decided we would do all of our news and weather in metric (kilometers, degrees Celsius and so on). Some of us DJs decided to start using metric time and created our own system.
We had 100 time units (we called them chronons) per day and a chart mapping chronons to regular time. Midnight was zero, noon was 50. Six am was 25, six pm was 75 and so on.
It was amusing to give a weather report for Atlanta in June as “The time is 61 and the temperature outside is 29.” Wonder how many of our listeners had any clue as to what we were saying…
“You can’t run away forever; but there’s nothing wrong with getting a good head start.” — Jim Steinman
Dennis Matheson — Dennis@mountaindiver.com
Hike, Dive, Ski, Climb — www.mountaindiver.com
Actually, GMT isn’t quite the same as UTC. They are both based on the prime meridian, but GMT, when used with atomic clocks, doesn’t have leap seconds.
During the era (not so many years ago) that leap seconds were being introduced, it was vital to keep the distinction alive. Nowadays, of course, no one uses GMT, so incorrectly saying “GMT” when you mean “UTC” doesn’t much matter.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
tanstaafl, WREK radio, by any chance?
Yep, WREK FM, 91.1.
That’s the student station for Georgia Tech for the rest of you out there. Who else but a bunch of bored engineering students would have come up with something like that?
“You can’t run away forever; but there’s nothing wrong with getting a good head start.” — Jim Steinman
Dennis Matheson — Dennis@mountaindiver.com
Hike, Dive, Ski, Climb — www.mountaindiver.com
The Daily Show had an excellent story on some person’s tranquility calendar. It was designed so that every month had thirty days, except December, which had 35.
The reporter (Mo Rocca, I believe) asked absurd questions, such as whether Malaysia should be returned to the British since its Independence Day fell on a 31st if the tranquility calendar went into effect. Another question was whether anyone would remember if Dan Rather and others ever existed since they were born on the 31st. It was hilarious.
Here is more information on the tranquility calendar.
http://www.cafecrowd.com/globedaily/content/120198_02.html
Thanks, Stephen for the Zulu info (even though I was mostly joking, I didn’t know about it).
John W., I still want GMT. UTC was, as my post suggests, devised and named partly because of political pressure from countries that didn’t want a system that gave such recognition to a single country. The definition of GMT could easily have been revised to include leap seconds. I regret the loss of historical context that the newer name implies.
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”
Actually, there’s another reason for dropping the name GMT. Many people find it hard to distinguish between GMT and British civil time, which is an hour later than GMT during the summer.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
True, some people might get confused, but that’s pretty much irrelevant. Neither GMT nor UTC is really intended for civil time, they just both happen to coincide with it.
Daylight-saving time doesn’t matter either. Spring ahead, fall back. Anybody who can’t master that doesn’t know what time it is anyway.
(Damn! I’m getting cranky again. Watch out when I reach 90!)
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”
That’s the problem. GMT doesn’t correspond to British Summer Time. People think that GMT = British civil time. In just the past few days days I’ve seen two questions on the Internet from people who think their software is broken because their computer’s “GMT” is an hour off from what they know to be the civil time in Greenwich.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams