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my__socrates__note t1_irk3atx wrote

Could I just add that it was an era of decimalisation, not called decimalisation. Decimal time was a component of the French Republican Calendar.

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couchmaster518 t1_irkeu6i wrote

No Sundays on their calendar… this was by design, if I recall correctly

Edit: the point of removing Sunday was to establish a secular calendar and society; I failed to get that across.

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LooieKablooie t1_irkz5j4 wrote

As opposed to it being an accident?

“Oh - hell. Did you see where I put Sunday? It was JUST here! No helping it now, I suppose…”

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slvrbullet87 t1_irmls63 wrote

It was by design, it just didn't work because people still tracked Sundays and went to church. The other reason it failed is workers only got 1 full day of rest in a 10 day week. They did also get a half day, but getting off at noon isn't the same as not going in to work at all.

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seamustheseagull t1_irmkozb wrote

I thought you meant that this was some real specific attempt to get rid of Sunday in particular; maybe an anti-religious thing in the new Republic.

But no, all days were eliminated, replaced with a ten-day week with days named "First" to "Tenth".

Why did you single out Sunday in particular?

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Ediwir t1_irmo8rj wrote

Anticlericalism and antireligiousness were important components of the philosophy of the time, because religion was seen as a tool of the old nobility. However they were not shared by the population at large.

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couchmaster518 t1_irmod97 wrote

Because I was trying (but poorly) to make that exact point; removing Sunday de-religious-ized (??) the calendar so a secular society could be established. The attempt failed, obviously.

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futurespice t1_irkchc7 wrote

They also reworked the days, week and months of the year and even nowadays you sometimes bump into laws passed on the 14th of Brumaire or some crap.

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craig_hoxton t1_irknllz wrote

Lobster Thermidor sounds better than "Lobster mid-July to mid-August".

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eviltwintomboy t1_irk21ra wrote

Was looking for something to use for my Worldbuilding science-fiction saga… thank you for this!!!!

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Johannes_P t1_irkqe23 wrote

It was part of an experiment called the Revolutionary Calendar, with months named from their season and days from agricultural products such as cotton and wheat.

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FarmD33 t1_irlzp1h wrote

Didn't some company do something similar a few years back, and try to make like 1000 time units per day a thing, instead of the normal 24 hours?

Our 24 hour, 60 minute, 60 second system is weird and unintuitive, but it's standard, we're all used to it, and it's not a problem that needs desperately to be solved. And if you did... 100 'hours' would be better. I mean, that would be an 'hour' of 14.4 minutes - about a quarter hour. That seems more intuitive than 144 minute-long hours to me...

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Gr8fulFox t1_irm5crv wrote

> Our 24 hour, 60 minute, 60 second system is weird and unintuitive

It isn't; it's based on base-12 counting, which is far easier for people to work with when the advanced tech of the day is an abacus.

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Longjumping_Youth281 t1_irmhr30 wrote

I think Kodak had something weird going on with their calendar also. It was more about weeks and months though

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a20xt6 t1_irndfcc wrote

That reminds me of working as a mechanic. Punching in & out of jobs. 12.2 hr 1.9hr .... 2.7 hr. etc. it wasn't that hard to get used too tbh. ... But it's different than doing all the hours differently I guess.

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ElToro959 t1_iro5xxz wrote

Right? The USPS used a decimalized hour for time clocks. For example I clocked in at 07.00 yesterday and clocked out at 20.69, which translates to around 8:42pm

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a20xt6 t1_irlxxhr wrote

Bring back metric time!

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jordanManfrey t1_irmov5l wrote

Remember this moment, people, eighty past two on April 47th

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GrilledGuru t1_irmf6ri wrote

They did it with other units of measure. Distance, mass, money, etc. It is still used in Europe and called the metric system.

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Confinte t1_irnj68d wrote

There metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

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Keffpie t1_irm2oy5 wrote

Time is one of the things that works better with circles, and therefore base 12, due to us living on a planet circling a sun (and with a satellite circling us).

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insite t1_irmqw3h wrote

Saw you getting downvoted, but I thought your comment was thoughtful. I get your point about circles, but I'm unclear why base 12 is better than base 10. Would you mind explaining in more detail?

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rheller2000 t1_irmtiz2 wrote

I don’t know Keffpie, and I’m no expert… but I’m guessing that his point was that having 12 hours/24 hours per day, and having (about) 360 days per year, allows is to divide up the day into smaller equal chunks than a 10 hour day would. 24 can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24. 20 can be divided only by 1, 5, 10, and 20. Ditto with 10 months. (Which the Republic didn’t have. They kept the 12 months, but renamed them.)

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Ahelex t1_iroam7h wrote

But 20 can be divided by 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, and 20.

Two fewer divisors than 24, but it's not too significant a change. You still get half and quarter days, nicer tenth and fifth days (i.e.: Integer divisors), and almost as nice eighth days (2.5, which is easier to do arithmetic with), but you get bad third and sixth days (repeating decimals).

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QiyanasStoriesYT t1_irk5jn0 wrote

They had watches in 1793 ?!

/s

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leadchipmunk t1_irk7o9k wrote

Watches date back to at least 1505. They're likely a little older, but that's the earliest one that a quick Googling gave me.

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oakydoke t1_irkbh86 wrote

I feel it should be noted that at this point, a “watch” was “a timekeeping device that could be carried on your person.” At that time it was almost exclusively a pocket watch, wristwatches were invented later.

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[deleted] t1_irk4h89 wrote

[deleted]

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D-Ulpius-Sutor t1_irk65tv wrote

Mathematically it actually does. If you want to divide a total into equal whole parts (so without using decimals) the number 10 actually isn't that good, since you can divide only by 10, 5 and 2. 12 on the other hand has five: 12, 6, 4, 3 and 2. The higher the multiples of 12 get, the more divisions fit in. With multiples of ten it actually doesn't get that much better.

So 12, 24, 48, 120, and 240 are way better totals for simple divisions for - let's say - packs of goods, time or money to be divided into equal parts that cannot or are easier not to be subdivided.

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Johannes_P t1_irkbv9l wrote

It's a multiple of 2 and 3, and this's enough for me.

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IncompetentFrog t1_irk4yxn wrote

24 hours is how long it takes for the earth to spin 1 time, it is also the amount of time our biological clocks are attuned to. It makes plenty of sense.

For example a 10 hour clock would never be consistent with daytime

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Smooman21 t1_irk5wgj wrote

Oh my sweet summer child... They're 10 units of time, not hours as you normally think. Each unit is longer than an hour and it fills the entire day/night cycle

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MentallyMusing t1_irkf1cn wrote

These are reasonings handed out after the fact to instill compliance and understanding to be used in defense of keeping the 24hour world clock in place as a standard after Railroad Corporations instituted the practice so their employees and shipments were able to predictably be in the expected place and negotiations over who could use what rail line when could be legally enforceable and eventually recieve Exclusive Rights of Use. It's an interesting bit of contractual warfare and new technology being used to create systematic standards meant by their Creators to last am eternity with predictable effects on society

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TheNakedMars t1_irm3did wrote

This was a brilliant idea that should never have been dropped and should have been adopted globally. The present means by which we measure daily time is a disgusting, discombobulated mess that makes sense only to filthy hippies stoned on smouldering penguin excrement.

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LordBrandon t1_irm1jgp wrote

When will Europeans switch to metric time? Base 10 is so much easier, but they insist on irrational numbers like 12 and 60. Its like how many seconds are in a month? Nobody knows. It's so embarrassing.

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CloudsAndSnow t1_irmanaw wrote

Ease of use is important, but standardisation is even more important. Imagine if only France used this system, and perhaps a couple other countries like Liberia and Myanmar, while literally the whole world agreed to use the metric 24h system. Now that would be embarrassing

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