Metric Time

[kilemall]

Here is a website dedicated to explaining the concept of metric time-

Metric Time Clock

Metric Time Clock

metric-time.com

Interesting system. It works with Earthcentric time, but renders a 1000 minute 10 hour day.

I won’t use it, because it would mess with the LBB2 ship movement predicated on Gs per 1000 seconds, but it would give that not in Kansas moment, all the time. Pardon the pun.

 

[Condottiere]

I remember doing that in secondary.

Metric felt a lot cleaner.

Then I began to appreciate the reason the Babylonians came up with sixty divisions.

 

[mike wightman]

Post revolution France tried it - not for long

 

[FreeTrav]

The watch company Swatch tried it, too.

 

[Spinward Flow]

 

[Enoki]

It's also a matter of what works with people when the measurement is something people are working with every day.

For example, I prefer Fahrenheit temperature measurements for everyday 'What's the weather like outside?' temperatures. It works better in my humble opinion, than centigrade. For engineering and science, centigrade is far better.

The same goes for time. How does a 10 hour clock work for people doing 'stuff?' How long is a work day on that clock, a 3.333... hour day? Will employees 'chip' that off to be say a 3.33 hour day but expect pay for a 3.333333... hour day? Again, a decametric clock working on a 10 hour day might be great for engineering and science, but not so much for normal folk going about their lives.

In terms of Traveller, I'd think that people on various planets might adopt some local time like daylight savings, Zulu, or Pyongyang time depending on the nature of their world and the dictates of their government. For day-to-day routine time, temperature, measurement, weight (another issue considering gravity would be an issue here), etc., a universal constant isn't really a necessity. Leave that stuff for people who need it like engineers, scientists, or maybe starship crews. I could see starships running on Zulu like submarines usually do today. They become their own time zone independent of any other.

 

[Condottiere]

Years later, I adapted the idea for my Gnome fantasy race.

If you remain awake long enough, each hour signalled a meal time, break, or customary snack.

Seconds are about fifteen percent faster; minutes thirty percent longer.

 

[McPerth]

I guess if this would ever be adopted, names would have to change to avoid confusion.

When the metric system was implemented, you were not told the yard would be a little longer to becoem a meter, to give you an example, but the new measure would be the metter, with a brand new name, so you know what are you talking about. The only exception is the ton, and so you must specify wich ton are you talking about.

Likewise, I guess if this metric time system was really intened to be implemented, the names hour, minute and second would disapear with it, to be sustituted (to give en example, those names are taken from my hat) by decidays, microdays and nanodays.

As Enoky says, you would feel strange if you're told your working schedule is 3.33 hours, but if you're told its 3.33 decidays, I guess you would adapt to it more easily (though still thinking on it as 8 hours, but your sons or grandsons maybe will not)...

People adapts to many such changes. Europeans of my age have had to adapt to the change of local currency (in my case peseta) to Euro, and no major disruption has occurred,despite the calculation for equivalence was not easy: 166 pts/€, (or to most people 6€/1000 pts, wich is very close)...

 

[Condottiere]

Hours can be left as is.

Microns would be the equivalent of minutes.

Clicks for seconds.

 

[whulorigan]

Here is a website dedicated to explaining the concept of metric time-

Metric Time Clock

Metric Time Clock

metric-time.com

Interesting system. It works with Earthcentric time, but renders a 1000 minute 10 hour day.

I won’t use it, because it would mess with the LBB2 ship movement predicated on Gs per 1000 seconds, but it would give that not in Kansas moment, all the time. Pardon the pun.

A variant on this was essentially (more or less) the original concept of the "stardate" in original Star Trek. One "unit" of the stardate was a "day" arbitrarily defined. It was decimalized into tenths (sometimes hundredths) and simply continued to advance from an initial start date of 0000.00. It notionally decoupled dating methods from cyclical rotational/revolutionary cycles of individual planets.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Original Battlestar Galactica in the late-70s measured time in Centons.

 

[whulorigan]

Original Battlestar Galactica in the late-70s measured time in Centons.

Centons and Microns, actually.

 

[Kakistocrat]

I guess if this would ever be adopted, names would have to change to avoid confusion.

When the metric system was implemented, you were not told the yard would be a little longer to become a meter, to give you an example, but the new measure would be the meter, with a brand new name, so you know what are you talking about. The only exception is the ton, and so you must specify which ton are you talking about.

There is historic precedent for such confusion; Napoléon I. didn’t like replacing the factorability of the traditional French measures with the decimalization of the metric system, so in 1812 he replaced the metric system with the mesures usuelles (“customary measures”), which were really old names applied to approximate the traditional units in terms of the metric system. For example, the toise, a traditional French unit of length analogous to the English fathom (or about 7 pies de Burgos in the traditional units of Castile), was redefined to be two meters exactly, about 2.6% larger than its traditional size. With the old names reused, people didn’t know which measure the names represented; that confusion lasted until 1840, when the “old new” metric units regained legal sanction. (One can still use “megagram” or “Mg” to unambiguously refer to the SI tonne.)

People adapt to many such changes. Europeans of my age have had to adapt to the change of local currency (in my case peseta) to the euro, and no major disruption has occurred, despite the calculation for equivalence was not easy: 166 pts/€, (or to most people 6€/1000 pts, which is very close) …

A similar adaptation happened in the first years of the United States. The reason why the US adopted a decimally divided dollar is because there were five different pound/shilling/penny (£sd) exchange rates applied to the real de a ocho among the original states, and it was easier to introduce a new currency (based upon the worn Spanish dollars then circulating) than to agree upon a single US pound sterling. However, it wasn’t until the 1850s that people stopped “translating” dollar/dime/cent amounts to their locally preferred £sd equivalents; people still tended to think (and calculate) in terms of £sd long after independence. As new states were formed, in most cases one of the existing £sd exchange rates was informally adopted as “local” to the new state. The last state in which this happened was Texas, in 1845. (Spanish dollars remained legal tender in the US until 1857.)

 

[mike wightman]

And, of course, there is the tale of how pirates prevented the USA from going metric...

 

[Condottiere]

Day = one cycle = ten clocks = one thousand tocks = one hundred thousand ticks.

 

[FreeTrav]

Day = one cycle = ten clocks = one thousand tocks = one hundred thousand ticks.

This would be essentially what Swatch did, plus extending it so that one Swatch .beat (your tock) was divided into 100 .pulses (your tick).

 

[bookwyrm]

And, of course, there is the tale of how pirates prevented the USA from going metric...

I never knew that it was pirates that kept me from properly learning the metric system in grade school. At the time, although it looked interesting, I just thought that it meant twice the math in half the time. By the time I got to Jr High School, the metric system was gone... must have been pirates .

In the present time, metric is in everything I buy, many books that I read, and an important part of Traveller. I honestly don't think I could build a space ship for Traveller without metric. Thinking about using yards and inches scares me, even though I have to translate metric to non-metric to get an idea of how big my character or an alien is, or get an idea of just how big a 200 dTon ship really is.

 

[Condottiere]

I guess dividing the day into a thousand minutes is pretty obvious.

Though you do need a further major grouping to digest time easier, hence a hundred tocks make a clock.

Or oclock.

 

[Condottiere]

Week = five cycles.

If we were still archaic, Runday, Punday, Gunday, Doneday, Funday.

 

[coliver988]

Week = five cycles.

If we were still archaic, Runday, Punday, Gunday, Doneday, Funday.

Because everyone needs a Funday