Clock logic
Clock logic
114 comments
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Let's just switch to metric time. https://metric-time.com/
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We're on Metric time already, the base unit of measure for time in the Metric system is the second. This is decimal time.
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Ugh I can hear it now
In our relentless pursuit of innovation, we are proud to announce the switch from the outdated 24-hour clock to Metric Time™.
Effective immediately, your standard 8-hour workday will now be... 8 metric hours.
That’s 80% of the entire day. Because nothing says “work-life balance” like leaving 2 hours for life.
Embrace the future. You’re already late.
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Holy shit, that actually looks so neat and organized, I want it 😭
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The numbers on the clock actually make a lot of sense.
12, 24 and 60 are highly composite numbers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_composite_number).
Imagine using numbers in a world where most people have no real understanding of fractions.
That is also the reason why you see the same or similar numbers as common screen refresh rates. 24, 48, 60, 120 and 240.
The 12 hour clockface design is that way because it is a similar design to that of a sundial, so people did not need to learn a new way to read the time. This also meant that for readibility reasons it was beneficial to only have 12 numbers.
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Surely you mean common refresh rates like 23.976Hz (NTSC), 25hz (PAL & ATSC), 50hz (PAL & ATSC), 59.95hz (NTSC), 100hz (PAL+) and 144hz, right? /s
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60 in particular is a superior highly composite number, 12 divisors compared to a paltry 8 for 24.
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Everybody loves composite numbers, but I'm missing the point in which this is advantage in the context of time. The only situation I know of where time needs to be divided is in paid work, and in this case it's always converted to base 10 money.
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The decimalization of money is its own fun history, with a lot of different countries undergoing their own transitions at different times.
The Spanish dollar, which was the world reserve currency in its heyday, was divided into 8 reals (see how pirates used to refer to money in the form of "pieces of eight") but issues with the supply of silver led to the introduction of the lesser real de vellón, which eventually settled at 20 to the dollar after over 100 years of uncertainty and confusion.
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Geometry.
The first clocks were sundials, which worked by putting a line on the ground. As soon as you comparing two different lines on the ground, you are doing geometry to represent time.
When you start messing around with geometry, you need an easy way to describe the angle of an equilateral triangle. 1/6th of a circle, or 1/3rd of a line. Trying to represent 1/3 or 1/6th in base 10 is fugly. Trying to divide a circle into 10 equal sections is just as fugly.
Dividing a circle into 6 equal sections is trivial: after you draw the circle with your compass, walk the compass around the perimeter. You have just inscribed a hexagon.
You're still missing the angle of 1/4 of a circle: the angles of a square. Those are pretty important in geometry as well. It's fairly trivial to draw another 6 points between the first 6 on your circle.
We use a 12-hour clock because of basic geometry. The 360-degree circle is the bastard child of basic geometry and a base-10 number system.
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Clocks are based on sundials. The little hand roughly follows where a shadow would be. The rest is just what people agreed on made the most sense.
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The 6 means 6, 18, AND 30.
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24 hours cause Egyptians split their sun dials and star decans into 12 parts each (probably cause 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6) which the greeks later turned into equal length hours (before the length would change over the year)
60 minutes due to Babylonian base-60 math
12 hour format is just tradition at this point, but derived from the sun dials which only worked at day, so half the time, and the star decans which only worked at night, so the other half.
pretty much every country except the US uses the 24h format on digitial clocks now
also the dude in the meme was kinda right: the day will be divided into 12 segments. and the night will too. at least originally
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This all originated from the Ancient Sumerians btw. They passed it down to Babylonians.
Edit: A bit of history from what I learned from listening to Fall of Civilizations in the shower.
The Ancient Sumerians invented this sexagesimal system because if you look at your hand, you notice 12 knuckles (this is obviously excluding your thumb, as that is used for counting each knuckle), and with your other hand you will raise a single finger for every time you finish counting past 12 knuckles on your left hand. So raising your thumb is 12, thumb and index is 24, and so on, until you reach 60.
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Came here to say this, you said it far better than I would have! Great addition with the edit.
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It's called a "highly composite number!" I read up on a lot of this stuff while learning about numerology and other esoteric spiritual traditions!
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I get the joke, but the sundials of ancient civilisations precluded clocks.
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Sundials also didn't work very well at midnight for some reason, what's ya point?
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You're just not holding the flashlight properly.
If you hold the flashlight right they work 100% of the time.
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That’s why for a long time, and even longer in the Royal Navy, the new day started at noon and not midnight.
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Sundials also didn’t work very well at midnight for some reason, what’s ya point?
Noon is the center of the dial. Midnight is just the opposite of noon.
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Well… This post sent me down a rabbit hole -> Unequal Hours if anyone else is curious.
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Yup, that's why we still don't have any clocks to this day.
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It is wild how people refuse to use the 24 hour clock. It is so logical and easy. kind of like the metric system…..
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First thing I change on every electronic device I buy.
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And really annoying when something only has 12hr mode
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I don't want to believe that time goes on for that long.
I'd rather a 6 hour clock.
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You mean like metric time?
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Metric system should be replaced with something base12 thh
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I'd prefer base 10 time than base 12. Until then I'll just keep with am pm
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I'd prefer base 12 for everything
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It only solves a small part of the issue at the cost of less convenience and consistency. Propose a “metric” time that solves more of this issue problem and I’m all for it
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less convenience and consistency
What? ... seriously, which convenience and consistency are you talking about.
24h only has one "inconsistency", going from 23:59 to 0:00. How is that less consistent than 12am being after 11:59pm and 12pm being after 11:59am. Solves all parts of the issue except for one. Which is a lot better than the 12h system.
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"This doesn't solve all of the problems instantly so I refuse"
Classic
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Placeholder
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We should all also use GMT and forget about time zones.
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Its possible to create a new time format/ system, the problem is how to standardise it everywhere
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24 hour analogue clocks exist. I have a 24 hour watch which only revolves once per 24 hours. It's a disadvantage though.
The reason why clocks and watches display 12 hours at a time is so that they have space to show finer resolution of time. If you try to cram 24 hours onto a clock, it's not easy to tell if it's 12:20 or 12:30 at a quick glance.
Most people are not too stupid to be aware of if they are in the first 12 hours or second 12 hours of a day, so they benefit from a watch with 12 hour timescale and finer resolution so that they can more easily see exactly what time it is.
And for all the dummies posting about 12h vs 24h clocks. In the sense of saying that it's 1pm vs 13:00. That's not what this meme is even describing. This is about the physical layout of a clock or watch face.
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You could get a jump hour watch, meaning the hour isn't a slowly moving hand but instead jumps from 6 to 7 with a jump, avoiding potential mixing up of hours, it would make it easier to read those 24h
Like this watch
Edit: The original watch linked is a weird one, it's not a jump hour watch but instead it has a jumping dial to turn it from a 12h to a 24h, very neat! I can't seem to find a 24h jump hour watch apart from this 30k breguet lol
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I can't believe this is the first I'm hearing of 24-hour analogue clocks! That's so cool. But yeah, I see your point about it now allowing for very much precision at a glance.
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If 12 is better than 24 we should build 6 hour analog clocks already!
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This is what the minute and second hands are for, though
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Oh also the hours will start at 1 and the minutes will start at 0
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Haven’t seen this one this week. Thanks
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Alright, I'm calling a 4.1666666666666666666666666666 metric hour meeting to discuss this!
The meeting might run to a full 5 metric hours.
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there's 86400 seconds in a day. If we use a new unit that is slightly shorter than a second as a metric second, we can do 100000 metric seconds a day, with 100 metric seconds per metric minutes, and 100 metric minutes per metric hour, and each day having 10 metric hours.
Your 1 hour activity now takes 0.5 metric hours (it might be 20% longer, but that's arbitrary anyways, we rounded them to the closest hour anyways)
We are only used to the current system because we have been using it.
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"Hey sweetie, please come home by Hour 89.58333333/100 otherwise I'm gonna have to ground you for a week, love you!"
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Keep it simple and just measure in terms of seconds since the Big Bang. The current time is 435,884,579,968,052,736 seconds, easy peasy
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Most of that time is irrelevant to me. Let’s just start it in 1970. And I need more precision, so can we do milliseconds instead of seconds?
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Maybe where you're sitting. But my frame of reference has had slightly different time dilation than yours.
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This would go great with my idea of everyone having a GUID instead of a name.
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We will also use 3 sticks to tell the time.
Time is linear. But this will be circular.
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Time ..line? Time is not made of lines. It is made of circles. That is why clocks are round!
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Why don't I ever get the fucking sniper rifle?
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The clock makes so much more sense when you rewrite the 12 as a 0
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I never confirmed this, but I noticed that in parts of West Africa, people wouldn't say "afternoon" until after 1:00pm. Since greetings were important, I started noticing it more and more when peoe would say "good morning" during lunch at 12:30pm. As if the 12 noon hour is still part of the time segment.
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Babylonians: I see this as a complete win.
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maybe this is because i grew up in a house that had a clock with hands but no numbers, but wth do you mean "the 6 means 30".
analogue clocks consists of two progress bars. the numbers are just for convenience.
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When the minutes hand is over the 6, 30 minutes have passed
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whoosh!
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There is no six. Clock faces have big and little ticks and a 12 maybe.
Example: Eco-Drive One -Official Site [CITIZEN] https://share.google/2d1QSW6LfqjUUHMeX
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3π/2
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Poor lad never learned the code
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My pet theory is (circa 10000 BCE) that 'houses' and 'hours' are related words, the 12 hour clock matched the zodiac, each hour/house was 1 Assyrian 'watch' and they had no trouble day or night (constellations at night, sundial during the day), they were easy to build, easy to communicate, easy to understand and efficient.
Then the Egyptians stole the technology (Circa 6000BCE) said '12 hours in a day? I got you bro', fucked it up and it all went downhill from there.
Feel free to quote me in your prize winning scientific paper.
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How important is it to your theory that "hour" is related to "house" in... ancient Assyrian language? Because they're completely unrelated in English, "house" coming from Germanic hus and "hour" coming from French ore. If we look at ancient Greek, the two are hoora for "hour" and oikos for "house". I think English post-vowel shift has to be the first language where those two even sound similar.
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Not central, just suspicious, but... this is 'house' as in astrological house as in the first part of the word 'horoscope', not house like a house you live in.
My background in linguistics consists of a couple chompsky soft-science books and a love of tolkien, but if you actually know something and wanna chat I'd honestly love to dig in on this seriously. DM me.
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Another classic meme. Love to see it getting a proper repost after all these long weeks.
114 comments
Only noobs start counting at 1. Midnight = 24:00 = 00:00