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0 pointsoneplane6y ago0 comments

I think that's what they did in Canada and it worked out great as far as I can tell (except that they had a silly clock based on 10 hours instead of 12 IIRC which had little to do with metric units and nobody wanted it nor was it compatible with the rest of the world).

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mark-r6y ago

I once tried to imagine a metric time system, with a deciday of 14.4 minutes. I realized that it would never catch on, because a half-hour TV show would have to be cut to 28.8 minutes losing at least 2 commercials.

jonas216y ago

They actually tried this, during the French Revolution:

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

It didn't catch on then either.

zokier6y ago

And again in the 90s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

zokier6y ago

14.4 minutes is a centiday btw. For decimal time I think milliday is the most reasonable unit, being very close to conventional minute.

In practice Mars might be the best opportunity for enacting decimal time, because Earth based units would be bit awkward on Mars.

mark-r6y ago

Thanks for the correction.

kibwen6y ago

I suppose it depends on what your goals are; despite being officially metric, my Canadian and British friends still seem to exhibit a melange of imperial and metric in everyday life.

saghm6y ago

I notice sometimes when watching British television that stones are commonly used as a unit of weight, which is interesting because it's imperial, not metric, but I've seen never it used in American contexts.

Someone6y ago

“1 stone equals 14 pounds” is (also) British. It dates back to Edward III (1350). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)#England.

The idea to use physical stones as reference weights is way older.

moron4hire6y ago

That's because we don't use the Imperial system. The system we use is called "US Customary".

thrower1236y ago

Some metric units work well, and are scaled to human everyday measurements, and some are not.

beerandt6y ago

But the time thing goes to show the absurdity of people's frame of reference. The same people that judgingly ask why the US hasn't gone full metric will say how absurd the idea of base 10 time is.

sudasana6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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mark-r6y ago

jonas216y ago

They actually tried this, during the French Revolution:

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

It didn't catch on then either.

zokier6y ago

And again in the 90s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

zokier6y ago

14.4 minutes is a centiday btw. For decimal time I think milliday is the most reasonable unit, being very close to conventional minute.

In practice Mars might be the best opportunity for enacting decimal time, because Earth based units would be bit awkward on Mars.

mark-r6y ago

Thanks for the correction.

kibwen6y ago

I suppose it depends on what your goals are; despite being officially metric, my Canadian and British friends still seem to exhibit a melange of imperial and metric in everyday life.

saghm6y ago

Someone6y ago

“1 stone equals 14 pounds” is (also) British. It dates back to Edward III (1350). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)#England.

The idea to use physical stones as reference weights is way older.

moron4hire6y ago

That's because we don't use the Imperial system. The system we use is called "US Customary".

thrower1236y ago

Some metric units work well, and are scaled to human everyday measurements, and some are not.

beerandt6y ago

But the time thing goes to show the absurdity of people's frame of reference. The same people that judgingly ask why the US hasn't gone full metric will say how absurd the idea of base 10 time is.

sudasana6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse