Sunday 14 October 2012

HELP! I'VE GONE ALL WONKY!


If you saw my post of 17th September 'Now Look What They've Been and Gone and Done' about the move to decimal time, you may be interested (well, a little bit interested) in the info below - because it's ALREADY BEEN TRIED more than once!


This was the painting in my decimal time post, and I thought I had made an original joke.  I should have known better.

Dev was in hospital last week and bought a newspaper to help pass the time.  And in the Daily Mail for 8th October there was a question on the Question and Answer page:

     'Has anyone tried to implement a decimal time system?'

And guess what - for a start the ancient Egyptians and ancient Chinese used a form of decimal time.  And then in 1795, when the French Revolutionary regime introduced decimal weight, length, currency, etc (which the EU has generously ensured we have to comply with in our country) they also tried a decimal calendar.


In fact their attempt at decimal time was not too successful.  The day was divided into ten parts, and each part into ten more parts, etc, until the hundredth part of a minute was called a decimal second.

Now either they looked forward in time and copied my idea, or in a former life I was stupid enough to be one of the committee that was involved in introducing the idea.

Obviously new clocks and watches were needed, and  - to ease people into the idea - the dials showed both the 12 hour time and the 10 hour time, but the idea didn't catch on.


The French tried again in the 1890s with decimal time based on the 'Centiday', with the day divided into 100 parts, but by 1900 they decided that still wasn't going to work.



Only just over a hundred years ago.  So perhaps they could be thinking it's time to have another go - and this time the EU could enforce it.  So if you live in 'Europe' perhaps you should still remember the Boy Scouts motto of 'Be Prepared'.






3 comments:

  1. I never know what the time is NOW - I will be totally lost if they ever did try that! Can't they leave well enough alone?

    How spooky though that you kind of reflectively predicted it!

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  2. that is so odd and interesting. It makes me wonder what they perceived as the problem with 12-hour time and how decimal time would make it better.

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  3. I like all of your colourful clocks!

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