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I am in the process of reading 'The Story of French' by Nadeau and Barlow. There's a chapter on how France was able to push their influence, during the renaissa

I am in the process of reading 'The Story of French' by Nadeau and Barlow. There's a chapter on how France was able to push their influence, during the renaissance, to get the world to switch to the metric system. Prior to developing the metric system, France had no standard for the pound; unlike England. This was the height of enlightenment in France, so the reformers wanted to replace the Gregorian Calendar with a metric time. I believe they wanted to call it the Republic Calendar; rather, the equivalent in french. So, they commissioned a poet to rename the months of the year, keeping twelve months of 30 days, with 5 or 6 ambiguous days at the end of the year. However, the major downfall was moving to a 10-day week which reduced the 'weekend' (not that it was called that) from 1 day out of a 7 day week to a 1-in-10. The plan was to have poetic names for the days of the week, but they felt that they were push their luck so instead they went with ordinal numbers. The only country to actually use the calendar was, of course, France for 16(!?) years until Napoleon repealed it during his imperial reign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time Anyone, feel free to correct me. I, literally, just read about this (fascinating) subject a couple nights ago. I haven't had time to independently follow up on the topic, but I plan to do so soon. Amendum: A better link, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time#France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time#France

vidarh 11y ago
The renaissance is usually seen as being the 15th and 16th centuries. France didn't switch to metric until the end of the 18th century, after the French revolution. If anything, the way the French "pushed their influence" was by conquest: The first countries that adopted metric were forced to when they were conquered by Napoleon. Many of them reverted after Napoleon was beaten, but then gradually they started converting to it again, Since you're mentioning Napoleon I assume you just got your periods mixed up. There were indeed many crazy suggestions for calendars after the French revolution...
- yes_or_gnome 11y ago
  Thanks for the clarifications; You're right that I am mixing up eras and nomenclature. 'The Age of Enlightenment' would be the correct name, yes? This was all during the first french republic and ended by the end of Napoleon's reign.
maus42 11y ago
The French revolutionary calendar is quite famous, because quite many significant events during the revolutionary period and early years to the Napoleon's reign are known by their dates: Most famous of all is the Eighteenth Brumaire, when Napoleon overthrew revolutionary institution and became the de facto dictator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_of_18_Brumaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_of_18_Brumaire The date was made even more famous by one Karl Marx, who used it in the evocative title of his essay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eighteenth_Brumaire_of_Louis_Napoleon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eighteenth_Brumaire_of_Lou... (or maybe the essay got famous because the title was evocative, don't know). Also quite famous was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermidorian_Reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermidorian_Reaction which saw Robespierre and the Jacobins overthrown. For other slightly less known events, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_the_French_Revolution#Events_commonly_known_by_their_Revolutionary_dates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_the_French_Revolut...
pklausler 11y ago
Vernor Vinge's novel, "A Deepness in the Sky", involves an spacefaring civilization that uses metric time (Ksec, Msec) after discarding Earth-based units. A feature of the book: the author never gives a footnote explaining how to convert these units to familiar ones, so you have to work it out yourself. Which means that you'll never forget it once you've done the homework. (Also, there's the old rule-of-thumb from Grace Murray Hopper that "pi seconds equals a nanocentury".)
- nitrogen 11y ago
  In my copy there's a timescale legend inside the front cover, and I've mostly forgotten the conversions.
- panglott 11y ago
  The problem with kiloseconds/megaseconds/&c. is that the time units are simply not human scale. Your base units are 1 second, 16 minutes, 11 days, and 31 years. If you want to talk about a period of a few days, you're talking about hundreds of 16-minute periods. If you're talking about a few years, you're talking about hundreds of near-fortnights. If you sleep one unit of time per two waking units, you'll have a couple of leftover time units here and there. http://panglott.blogspot.com/2009/06/kiloseconds-brevels.html http://panglott.blogspot.com/2009/06/kiloseconds-brevels.htm... http://panglott.blogspot.com/2013/06/timekeeping-in-embassytown.html http://panglott.blogspot.com/2013/06/timekeeping-in-embassyt...
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Just make 100,000 seconds in a 'day' and be done with it.
jhallenworld 11y ago
Rome had 8 day weeks.. actually the history of the Roman calendar is fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Nundinal_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Nundinal_cycle "Because the term of office of elected Roman magistrates was defined in terms of a Roman calendar year, a Pontifex Maximus would have reason to lengthen a year in which he or his allies were in power, or shorten a year in which his political opponents held office. For example, Julius Caesar made the year of his third consulship in 46 BC 445 days long."

vidarh 11y ago

The renaissance is usually seen as being the 15th and 16th centuries. France didn't switch to metric until the end of the 18th century, after the French revolution. If anything, the way the French "pushed their influence" was by conquest: The first countries that adopted metric were forced to when they were conquered by Napoleon. Many of them reverted after Napoleon was beaten, but then gradually they started converting to it again, Since you're mentioning Napoleon I assume you just got your periods mixed up. There were indeed many crazy suggestions for calendars after the French revolution...

yes_or_gnome 11y ago
Thanks for the clarifications; You're right that I am mixing up eras and nomenclature. 'The Age of Enlightenment' would be the correct name, yes? This was all during the first french republic and ended by the end of Napoleon's reign.

maus42 11y ago

The French revolutionary calendar is quite famous, because quite many significant events during the revolutionary period and early years to the Napoleon's reign are known by their dates: Most famous of all is the Eighteenth Brumaire, when Napoleon overthrew revolutionary institution and became the de facto dictator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_of_18_Brumaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_of_18_Brumaire The date was made even more famous by one Karl Marx, who used it in the evocative title of his essay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eighteenth_Brumaire_of_Louis_Napoleon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eighteenth_Brumaire_of_Lou... (or maybe the essay got famous because the title was evocative, don't know). Also quite famous was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermidorian_Reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermidorian_Reaction which saw Robespierre and the Jacobins overthrown. For other slightly less known events, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_the_French_Revolution#Events_commonly_known_by_their_Revolutionary_dates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_the_French_Revolut...

pklausler 11y ago

Vernor Vinge's novel, "A Deepness in the Sky", involves an spacefaring civilization that uses metric time (Ksec, Msec) after discarding Earth-based units. A feature of the book: the author never gives a footnote explaining how to convert these units to familiar ones, so you have to work it out yourself. Which means that you'll never forget it once you've done the homework. (Also, there's the old rule-of-thumb from Grace Murray Hopper that "pi seconds equals a nanocentury".)

nitrogen 11y ago
In my copy there's a timescale legend inside the front cover, and I've mostly forgotten the conversions.
panglott 11y ago
The problem with kiloseconds/megaseconds/&c. is that the time units are simply not human scale. Your base units are 1 second, 16 minutes, 11 days, and 31 years. If you want to talk about a period of a few days, you're talking about hundreds of 16-minute periods. If you're talking about a few years, you're talking about hundreds of near-fortnights. If you sleep one unit of time per two waking units, you'll have a couple of leftover time units here and there. http://panglott.blogspot.com/2009/06/kiloseconds-brevels.html http://panglott.blogspot.com/2009/06/kiloseconds-brevels.htm... http://panglott.blogspot.com/2013/06/timekeeping-in-embassytown.html http://panglott.blogspot.com/2013/06/timekeeping-in-embassyt...
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Just make 100,000 seconds in a 'day' and be done with it.

jhallenworld 11y ago

Rome had 8 day weeks.. actually the history of the Roman calendar is fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Nundinal_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Nundinal_cycle "Because the term of office of elected Roman magistrates was defined in terms of a Roman calendar year, a Pontifex Maximus would have reason to lengthen a year in which he or his allies were in power, or shorten a year in which his political opponents held office. For example, Julius Caesar made the year of his third consulship in 46 BC 445 days long."