• ELLIOTTCABLE@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    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 …

    http://yreality.net/UJD/

    Edit 2: Found this old explanation I apparently put together in July 2010, according to my image archive:

  • nudny ekscentryk@szmer.info
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    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.

    • SSTF@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The history of the calendar in Roman times is actually an entire topic to itself.

      The pre-Julian calendar required fine tuning every year in winter to keep the rest of the months aligned with the seasons.

      Technically not a difficult job to keep the calendar running smoothly and consistently, but the person in charge of the calendar in Rome was a politician, so they would play political games with the length of the year.

      Caesar wanted a calendar that would run on auto-pilot to strip power away from those politicians.

      By sheer coincidence when Caesar made his reform, during the the changeover of calendars while he was in charge, he got to rule over a 400+ day long year.

  • hglman@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The inventor of the imperial units used by the US, this one really sniffed glue.

    • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      The decimal time was introduced at the same time than the rest of the units.

      In this system days are 10 hours long, hours are 100 minutes and minutes 10 seconds.

      Unfortunately the system did not stick at the time and we reverted to the old system.

  • marduk@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Chad American broken clocks: right twice per day Virgin Bri‘ish broken clocks: only right once per day

    pwnd

  • hawkwind@lemmy.management
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    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?

  • Squirrel@thelemmy.club
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Why hasn’t the Metric world found a better way? I want a clock based around multiples of 10, dammit!

    • mlfh@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      One benefit of base 12 and base 60 over base 10 for everyday use with things like time is simple factorization. You can divide 12 hours evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths, and 60 minutes evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, etc. With base 10, you’ve just got halves and fifths.

      • Squirrel@thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, I know all about that, but I don’t think we’ll convince people to change everything to base 12, so let’s go with a base 10 clock.

          • Andrew@mander.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            I didn’t put in a secret punchline. It’s a genuine thought. What do you think I did?

            • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              Well, I thought I was replying to squirrel, but they say we’ll never get everyone to use base 12 systems so we had better just go to base 10…

              When the entire sae/imperial/whatever is either base 12 or divisible by it already.

              There’s already a perfectly good base 12 system in everyday use, but we’ll never get anyone to accept that so we gotta accept inferior base 10. See the joke?

                • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  i’m reading here on .ml and it looks like my reply was to squirrel and then you replied to me. what are you seeing?