When I was a kid, I was such a nerd, that I invented my own decimal timekeeping system.
Even wrote a little macOS menubar clock for it — I was dead-serious.
Edit: omg the website still works, even though I never put any real content there …
Edit 2: Found this old explanation I apparently put together in July 2010, according to my image archive:
Ehhhh, no. There are very important reasons we divide the time this way. 24 is a highly composite number (a number with more divisors than all numbers preceding it; like an opposite of a prime number). This allows us to easily divide the day into halves, thirds, quarters and sixths. So is 60, with even more divisors.
My guess is the same thing goes for the switch from Roman to Julian calendar (ten to twelve months in a year).
Interestingly, the same goes for 360 degrees in a full angle.
We should just use second notation for everything.
I’ll be there in 5 min? I’ll be there in 2 or 3 hundo!
See you tommorow? See you in in 86K!
Next week? About half a Megasec!
Doesn’t Megasecond sound better than Fortnite?
The reason for 12-hour clocks is most cultures worldwide have variable length hours of over a year. For Western times this comes from Greeks who had 12 day and 12 night hours. Early water clocks in antiquity would attempt to make that adjustment automatically.
The inventor of the imperial units used by the US, this one really sniffed glue.
Why hasn't the Metric world found a better way? I want a clock based around multiples of 10, dammit!
Swatch tried Internet Time: www.swatchclock.com
Chad American broken clocks: right twice per day Virgin Bri‘ish broken clocks: only right once per day
pwnd
Wait until you hear about traditional Japanese timekeeping, where the hours had different lengths throughout the year, depending on daylight: https://youtu.be/1BJmnEa6YGE
Also each part of the world will offset by half an hour or so.
Also military will operate by a 24 hrs.
Also fuck you
"The day will start when the sun comes up?" No, when the sun is the furthest away it can be from us.
Man I just want everyone to use UTC
The joys of a base-60 number system
12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Oh and when the minute hand is 3/4s of the way to the 12 it's quarter too...5.
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