As an American who uses the 24-hour time, so many people use 12-hour I basically still use 12-hour.
Military grade is defined as the lowest quality required to be used by the military, often resulting in the cheapest product that is still suitable for military use.
I always saw it as “a ton of money is thrown at R-D on this one specific thing to make it do that ken specific thing really well”
Almost, it’s “a ton of money is charged for this minimally useful thing made by the lowest bidder”
No military equipment except the m16s work quite like its supposed to.
That’s why they use it as a buzzword. I encourage you to do your own research now that it’s been brought up that it may differ from what they sold you on.
It is, but a lot of people think it high-quality. I believe the saying goes “an engineer isn’t someone who can make something work, it’s someone that can make something barely work.” Idk, I’m going into welding, not my expertise.
The US military also uses loads of metric things. “Real Americans” won’t touch those, either. Apart from 9mm guns and ammo.
750ml Bourbon
Except we refer to that as “a fifth”.
What’s it say on the bottle?
A fifth of what? (genuine question)Ah, ¹/₅ gallon ≈ 750 mL
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In ancient times, people did not have the concept of a “civil day”; they viewed day and night as separate things which alternated.
The Assyrians divided the day into six equal parts, and the night into six equal parts, called ush. But because sunrise and sunset move around over the course of the year, the lengths of day and night vary, and thus one ush during the day would not be the same length as an ush at night except around the equinoxes.
The Babylonians divided ushes in two to make hours, because it was easier to do astronomy in 12s than 6es. This resulted in 12 hours in a day and 12 hours at night, but daytime hours were still different lengths to nighttime hours, and the lengths of hours still varied over the course of the year.
The Greeks partially adopted the Babylonian system; they divided the day into 12 hours but the night was divided into four watches. The Romans copied the Greek system, but later went full Babylonian with 12 hours at night as well. (I feel like this coïncided with the rise of Christianity, but I have no evidence). The Romans introduced the concept of the civil day beginning at midnight (which the Chinese independently came up with), and over time, this led to the idea of 12 hours from midnight to noon, and 12 hours from noon to midnight. That idea postdates Rome, however; Roman hours were reckoned from sunrise to sunset and sunset to sunrise.
Assyrian astronomical knowledge seems to have reached China via India, as traditional Chinese timekeeping divides the civil day into 12 shi. Ancient shi were like Assyrian ushes; they were either 1/6 of a day or 1/6 of a night. Originally, midnight and noon fell in the middle of a shi, but this was changed to shi starting at midnight to make administration and astronomy easier. This system of variable-length shi continued to be used in Japan until about the Meiji Restoration.
Fixed-length hours are the result of analogue clocks, which are impractical to design to change the lengths of hours with the seasons (but not impossible; the wskusei clock is an ingenious Japanese clock from the 17th century that does exactly that). China had reliable, accurate water clocks by the Tang dynasty, while Europeans developed circular mechsnical clocks in the late Middle Ages. In neither case was it practical to make something as clever as the wakusei clock, so analogue clocks were marked the mean length of a shi or an hour as a reasonable approximation. Since there are 12 hours from midnight to noon and 12 from noon to midnight, that led to the 12-hour time system we know today.
You’ve never seen an analog clock?
That’s where it comes from, and that’s where it makes perfect sense. (An 8 hour reset wouldn’t) No need to carry that over to digital clocks however.
You have it backwards. Analogue clocks are the way they are because of the 12-hour convention.
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Well, time measurement and the division of the day into 12/24 hours is of course entirely a human concept and thus a bit arbitrary and made up, so yes, you could divise a system with 8 hour splits, sure.
But the 12-hour system makes sense as soon as you buy into the 1 hour = 60 minutes convention and split that up into 5-minute blocks. There are 12*5minutes in an hour, so after 12 hours your hour and minute hand reach the same position again, thus the reset.
That doesn’t work so well with 8 hours, because you’d have to divide the hour into 60/8=7.5 minute blocks, which is pretty awkward.
Or you’d have to define the hour as having 64 minutes and divide it into 8*8 minutes blocks. And theres a dualist religion in my favorite fantasy RPG world, that would award you sainthood if you did that, but that’s not the world we live in.
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Damn, this person knows clocks
Someone made the call to choose a division of 12 though. They could have also chosen 24.
And have the numbers spaced 2.5 minutes apart?! MADNESS!
Don’t forget the klick. Most of them are not buying that either.
The people in all the countries that have no problem counting off another dozen past twelve don’t always do that though. If you meet your friend at 15:00 most people will revert to “at 3” in their language. And they might “go to bed at 11.” Economy of language and context clues. So colloquially the am/pm crowd and the 24h folks aren’t far apart at all.
And any person claiming that it’s too difficult to add or subtract twelve from at maximum a low two-digit integer ought to have their passport revoked.
I’ve used it since I was 12 🤷
You mean since you were 0?
Didn’t get it at first, but scared my cat when I did XD
I believe its roots have more to do with the railways than with the military. I have never called it military time to be honest.
While trains were the big “clock unifiers” back then, here in Europe, the 24h clock is generally the local version of “time”, without the “military” part.
TBF most of us have decent trains.
Something that’s been growing on me, but that I’m still unsure of, is 24-hour time that goes beyond 24 to reference the next day. I was in Japan recently, and there were many restaurants that would write their opening hours as, for example, 18:00 - 25:30, to represent that they are open until 01:30 the next day. Was confusing at first, but makes maths easier and means that intervals of time never count backwards! From memory, OpenStreetMap use this system, too.
Sounds sick! I’m in favor of standardizing this.
Japanese people that understand 24h notation‽ In my experience with language exchange I’ve always had the issue that language exchange partners didn’t understand 24h notation at all!
I also can’t remember seeing this notation on opening times in my visits there, but maybe I haven’t been paying close attention…
This comment is actually really interesting to me, because I was quite excited about all the 24hr time I saw over there, and remember 12hr being used pretty much only in text clearly intended for (english-speaking) foreigners. Not that I doubt your own experience at all, of course, but it did make me wonder where the difference comes from, and also if I’m just going crazy bc you seem to have more experience than I do. Couldn’t find anything on regional differences from a cursory search, but FWIW, Wikipedia says that both are used pretty interchangeably, but does have a section on the specific phenomenon I’m talking about
Times past midnight can also be counted past the 24 hour mark, usually when the associated activity spans across midnight. For example, bars or clubs may advertise as being open until “30時” (i.e. 6 am) (See ja:30時間制)
Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_Japan
American consumers will buy anything. Why hasn’t anyone developed a military clock for proud American households?
Fox News MAGA Trump Veterans for America First then Jesus then Guns 24-Hour Time
I find the 12-hour practical for daily life. But I put my phone on 24 hour time when I’m traveling and find that to be helpful.
Am American, use 24 hour time. It’s only called military time here.
Psst, confused American, let me give you a secret: Nobody uses the 24-hour clock in speech, we.just write with that and call 13:00 “1 PM” or something like that in our local language.
I wasn’t confused before, but now I am. If you have to do the conversion to 12 hour to speak, what’s the point?
We use them interchangeably in speech. Whichever one currently rolls off the tongue better. Idk about trashboy’s “nobody”.
24 hour thing is a new thing for us too man give us time
I’m American, but a software engineer, 24 hour clock for me! Totally understand I’m an outlier.
I be taking naps on accident like once a week. I need to know if I’m waking up at 8am or 8pm
I’m not american and I too prefer the 12 hour clock. 24 hour clock has never been intuitive for me. I always have to put in brain power to convert it in my head.
Only an American would think that the 24-hour clock has anything to do with the military in the first place.
I personally don’t associate it with the military, but I’m the exception to that. Lots of people call it “military time” here.
