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submitted 1 year ago by MobileTechGuy@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[-] ELLIOTTCABLE@beehaw.org 58 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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:

[-] SpooneyOdin@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago

That's pretty cool! The French actually had a decimal time system after the revolution, but they eventually abandoned it.

[-] paulchartres@beehaw.org 18 points 1 year ago

Okay but now you have to tell us how it works!

[-] kambusha@feddit.ch 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

All I can gather, is that the number furthest to the right seems to be 100ms, so the second digit from the right is counting seconds. When those 3 digits reach 000, they've counted 100 seconds.

I see 19567288000 currently. If I remove the last zero, that number should be in seconds. So 1956728800 seconds = ~62 years. The year 2023 - 62yrs = 1961.

Maybe it's counting the number of seconds since a date in 1961? Unix time uses 1970-01-01 but not sure what significance 1961 has.

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[-] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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.

[-] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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.

[-] Misconduct@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ahhh. This is it. This is the good stuff. Lemmy is really coming along I missed this.

[-] xx3r@lemmy.studio 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We should have a base 12 metric system but the French already established the 10

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[-] hawkwind@lemmy.management 54 points 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?

[-] Vithar@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 year ago

There is a fun fun sci-fi book called "Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge. The Humans use epoch time with si prefixed Seconds for time,

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[-] hglman@lemmy.world 51 points 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.

[-] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 year ago

It came from the Sumerians, not the Greeks.

[-] hglman@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

The Greeks specifically build water clocks with variable length days.

[-] Zerush@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

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[-] Squirrel@thelemmy.club 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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 78 points 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.

[-] kvn@midwest.social 26 points 1 year ago

Another benefit of base 12 is that you can count to 12 easily with one hand by using your thumb to count each of the 3 segments on your 4 fingers.

I learned that on that other website prior to the great migration and it blew my mind then.

[-] Gork@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

tries it

Whoa. Dude that's super useful.

[-] nailbar@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm trying to think of a situation where I need to count to 12 on one hand 🤔

This would be useful if I was used to counting with base 12.

[-] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

When ordering twelve beers

[-] static_motion@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago

Wait until you find out that binary counting allows you to count to 31 with one hand.

[-] SeaJ@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

Pros scale that up to base 60 by counting to 12 and using the other hand to count how many times they have counted to 12.

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[-] Squirrel@thelemmy.club 4 points 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.

[-] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 25 points 1 year ago

A base-10 unit circle would be abhorrent. 1/2 of a circle is an important concept, but 1/5th and 1/10th of a circle are rarely used in geometry or trigonometry. Meanwhile, a right angle (1/4 of a circle) would require an ugly fraction, and the angle of an equilateral triangle (1/6th) would require a repeating decimal.

Think of 12-hour clocks and 360-degree circles as paper bags. When we're fucking with angular concepts, you do not want to take those bags off Decimal's head.

[-] Andrew15_5@mander.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

I just want everything to be switched to 24 instead of 12. Why everyone want to complicate things?

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[-] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 year ago

Because base ten sucks for practical use and anything that needs division.

[-] exu@feditown.com 10 points 1 year ago
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[-] mlc894@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Some people briefly tried that during the French Revolution, but it never caught on.

[-] BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It was called the French Republican Calendar. Didn’t last very long.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

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[-] hglman@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time?wprov=sfla1

The French tried at the same time they adopted the rest of the metric system but it just didnt offer much advantage vs changing out clocks.

With digital clocks it would be simpler now.

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[-] xep@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago
[-] sockenklaus@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah that didn't fly at all ..

[-] sapetoku@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Thank goodness for the stardate!

[-] marduk@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 1 year ago

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

pwnd

[-] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 13 points 1 year ago

A slow clock might not be right in your entire lifetime.

[-] Arigion@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago

Wait until you hear about traditional Japanese timekeeping, where the hours had different lengths throughout the year, depending on daylight: https://youtu.be/1BJmnEa6YGE

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 8 points 1 year ago

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[-] Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

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

Military plus all of mainland Europe

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[-] pinkdrunkenelephants@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

The joys of a base-60 number system

[-] MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

"The day will start when the sun comes up?" No, when the sun is the furthest away it can be from us.

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Man I just want everyone to use UTC

[-] Volodymyr@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Time zones are kind of useful though.

[-] dullbananas@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

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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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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