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No, don't panic! I know it's scary and disturbing, but trust me: one day, all clocks will be this way! Y'see, in this age of the metric system for measurements and decimal currency, it makes sense that we finally tackle one of the last bastions of the imperial era: time. Why do we divide the day into twenty-four hours? Why divide each hour into sixty minutes, each minute into sixty seconds? A decimal measurement system is logical and simple. I know, for example, that there are 1,000 metres in a kilometre. 1000 grams in a kilogram. Ten millimetres in a centimetre. With the metric system, everything is based on powers of ten or one hundred, so it's simple, for example, to calculate the number of centimetres in 1.5 kilometres (1.5 kilometres = 1,500 metres = 150,000 centimetres). But ask the average person how many seconds are in 3.5 hours, and they'll need to have a good ponder about it (3.5*60*60 = 12,600). |
For those unfamiliar with the metric system, here's one that might get you interested: measurements of volume and length (and, in some ways, weight) are all tied together! A cube of 10x10x10 centimetres exactly encloses one litre! Plus, a litre of water weighs exactly one kilogram! How cool is that? With that system, you can give me the length, depth and width of a lake and I can tell you exactly how much the water weighs! Try doing something like that with your imperial system with its furlongs and hundredweights and fluid ounces!
To calculate time with the current system, we've got to think not of multiplying by ten or one hundred, but by sixty, or twenty-four, or both at the same time. (The calculation of time becomes even more complex because of the bizarre practice of dividing the day into two twelve-hour sections. Seriously, that's just nuts! If the human race isn't yet ready for decimal time, can we please at least stick to a twenty-four-hour clock?)
But if we decide to divide the day into ten hours, each hour into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds, it all becomes a lot simpler... For clarity, let's call our decimal divisions dours, dinutes and deconds... To use the same example as above: I can easily calculate that in 3.5 dours there are 35,000 deconds (3.5*100*100).
The above decimal clock takes one day (10 dours) for the "dour hand" (the shorter, thicker black hand) to make a complete revolution. It starts at midnight (0:00:00), so if the dour hand is pointing straight down, it's mid-day (5:00:00).
The dinute hand takes one dour to make a full revolution, and the decond hand (the thin red one) takes one dinute.
In each day there are 86,400 seconds, or 100,000 deconds... This is how the new decimal units compare with standard time:
| 1 dour | = | 2.4 hours | 1 hour | = | 0.417 dours | |
| 1 dinute | = | 1.44 minutes | 1 minute | = | 0.694 dinutes | |
| 1 decond | = | 0.864 seconds | 1 second | = | 1.157 deconds |
So there's really not that much difference between a second and a decond, or a minute and a dinute: it's only the dours that are a little bit tricky to get used to. That, and stuff like "a quarter past" will no longer mean 15 minutes (in decimal time it means 25 dinutes, which is 36 minutes in standard time).
One of the many great advantages of decimal time is that there's no longer going to be any confusion about AM and PM: if someone says they're going to "meet you at 6" you don't have to wonder whether you're meeting for breakfast or dinner... because 6:00 in decimal time is 14:24 in standard time, so you'll be meeting for lunch.
Please, pass this on to everyone! You know it makes sense!
(And don't get me started on the arbitrary number of days in a month...)
| Ver. | Date | Details |
| 0.11 | 2012-11-27 | Changed the clock-face so that the numbers are now all the right way up, instead of curving around the centre (I've seen real clocks that do it both ways!). |
| 0.10 | 2012-11-27 | Beta-test release. |
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