If you can get used to an hour that’s twice as long, probably not too difficult a feat, the minutes and seconds are reasonably close to what we’re used to. However, science uses the second as the base of time and that’s a huge amount of momentum to overcome. If you do the math, each hour in the French decimal system was 144 conventional minutes long, each minute was 86.4 conventional seconds and each second was 0.864 conventional seconds. Further attempts were made in the late 1800s but all failed. Vive la revolution!ĭecimal time went into official use in France on Septembut mandatory use ended April 7, 1795, giving it a very short life. You can hardly blame the French for trying. Summarizing, that’s the time 2:34 AM represented as 154 minutes, 0.1069, and 10.69%. To convert 2:34 AM to a single number representing the duration of the day in minutes we have to do: (2 hours*60 min/hour)+34 min=154 minutesĪs a fraction of the day it’s: 154 min/(60 min/hour * 24 hours)=0.1069Īnd finally, 0.1069 as a percentage is 10.69%. That’s certainly simpler than what we currently have to do with our standard system. The seconds can simply be added on as an additional 2 digits. We could also write it as the fraction 0.234 of the day or written as a percentage, 23.4% of the day. ![]() This allowed for time to be written as we would, 2:34 for 2 hours and 34 minutes, but also as the decimal numbers 2.34 or even 234. French Decimal Timeįrench decimal time clock, By Cormullion, Own work, via Wikimedia CommonsThere were a few attempts in France to switch to decimal time. The first began use in 1794 during the French Revolution (1789-1799). They divided the day into 10 hours, each hour being 100 minutes long, and each minute containing 100 seconds. This is the division of time using base 10 instead of dividing the day into 60, 60 and 24. While the base unit, the second, has its origin in the Sumerian base 60 number system, it is a metric unit.ĭecimal time refers to the time of day. We’re all familiar with these and use them frequently: milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds, and so on. Metric time is for measurement of time intervals. Metric Time Vs Decimal Timeīefore getting into decimal time, we should clear up what we mean by metric time, since the two are often used incorrectly. It was recently defined more precisely as “the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom”.īut as you can see above, though necessary and useful, all our units were derived from fairly arbitrary sources and are of arbitrarily selected lengths. ![]() The second was for a long time defined to be 1/86400 of a mean solar day (60*60*24 = 86400). The words minute and second come from the latin pars minuta prima, which means “first small part”, and pars minuta secunda, or “second small part”. The selection of 60 for the divisions stems ultimately from the Sumerians with their sexagesimal (base 60) number system, though it’s difficult to find just when they were chosen for the units of time. Prior to that their use just wasn’t practical. The use of 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute didn’t come into everyday use until the invention of mechanical clocks in the 16th century. Notice how easily you can count them using your thumbs, something you should be comfortable with in these days of thumb-manipulated mobile phones. One possible reason for using 12 is that it’s the number of segments we have separated by knuckles on the four fingers of each hand. But did you know that if the French had their way back in the 1890s when they tried to introduce decimal time, you’d be counting to a different beat? Did you know the Chinese have used decimal time for millennia? And did you know that you may have unknowingly used it already if you’ve programmed in Linux? Read on to see what decimal time is along with the answers to these questions.īabylonian numerals, By Jose117, via Wikimedia CommonsFirst off, just why do we have 60 seconds, 60 minutes and 24 hours in a day? The 24 hour day started with the Egyptians breaking the number of daylight hours into 12. If you’re like me, you count this time in your head and then check how in sync you are. ![]() Many stop lights at street intersections display a countdown of the remaining seconds before the light changes.
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