4 ms·

There's also the ill-fated Swatch Internet Time, which was a decimal system that divided the day into 1,000 beats and no time zones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

There's also the ill-fated Swatch Internet Time, which was a decimal system that divided the day into 1,000 beats and no time zones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time They even sold physical watches with this design.

ivlad 4mo ago
It looks like a poorly thought-out marketing project. For example, how to deal with the Earth rotation irregularity and leap seconds? One beat is way too long to correct with, so the correction has to be in centibeats, fractions of beat, inconvenient. Why would this in CET and not in UTC? Aligning start of the day with the existing customs seems beneficial. But the idea of the universal decimal time is a nice one. I wish we had something like that.
- tdeck 4mo ago
  > It looks like a poorly thought-out marketing project. For example, how to deal with the Earth rotation irregularity and leap seconds? Most people don't care about those things though. How does a Casio watch deal with leap seconds? How does a Rolex deal with them? The barrier to adoption is going to be social and not some obscure technical objection by the IAU.
  - ivlad 4mo ago
    Rolex and Casio deal with simply when IERS introduces one. Beats is a new time measurement system, not just a new clock. So if the world (IERS) would stops it, they would have to have new rules for dealing with leap “micro-days” or “mili-beats”. And second is the fundamental SI constant, quite a bit of stuff is derived from it.
networked 4mo ago
Decimal time isn't great because it doesn't divide into thirds. I like Swatch Internet Time as a retro novelty, but I consider New Earth Time the more practical take on the same idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Earth_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Earth_Time. It's based on UTC and splits the day into 360 degrees.
- bluebarbet 4mo ago
  And not just thirds, decimal doesn't divide into quarters either.
  - andsoitis 4mo ago
    Swatch Beats was a decimal system of 1000 beats a day. You can divide 1000 into 4 x 250 beats.
myself248 4mo ago
I feel like it was sooooo close to catching on, but basing it on CET instead of UTC made it a bit too clearly tongue-in-cheek. That also torpedoed its main user-base, which I always thought was sysadmins.

ivlad 4mo ago

It looks like a poorly thought-out marketing project. For example, how to deal with the Earth rotation irregularity and leap seconds? One beat is way too long to correct with, so the correction has to be in centibeats, fractions of beat, inconvenient. Why would this in CET and not in UTC? Aligning start of the day with the existing customs seems beneficial. But the idea of the universal decimal time is a nice one. I wish we had something like that.

tdeck 4mo ago
> It looks like a poorly thought-out marketing project. For example, how to deal with the Earth rotation irregularity and leap seconds? Most people don't care about those things though. How does a Casio watch deal with leap seconds? How does a Rolex deal with them? The barrier to adoption is going to be social and not some obscure technical objection by the IAU.
- ivlad 4mo ago
  Rolex and Casio deal with simply when IERS introduces one. Beats is a new time measurement system, not just a new clock. So if the world (IERS) would stops it, they would have to have new rules for dealing with leap “micro-days” or “mili-beats”. And second is the fundamental SI constant, quite a bit of stuff is derived from it.

networked 4mo ago

Decimal time isn't great because it doesn't divide into thirds. I like Swatch Internet Time as a retro novelty, but I consider New Earth Time the more practical take on the same idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Earth_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Earth_Time. It's based on UTC and splits the day into 360 degrees.

bluebarbet 4mo ago
And not just thirds, decimal doesn't divide into quarters either.
- andsoitis 4mo ago
  Swatch Beats was a decimal system of 1000 beats a day. You can divide 1000 into 4 x 250 beats.

myself248 4mo ago

I feel like it was sooooo close to catching on, but basing it on CET instead of UTC made it a bit too clearly tongue-in-cheek. That also torpedoed its main user-base, which I always thought was sysadmins.