On 1/16/22 2:30 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
> No. It's hours, minutes, then seconds. But in the US it's mostly
> 12-hour time, not 24-hour time, though that may be changing.

ObSF: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
thirteen." (First sentence of 1984)

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

In article <ss225m$sk$1@dont-email.me>,
Gary McGath <garym@REMOVEmcgathREMOVE.com> wrote:
>On 1/16/22 2:30 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
>> No. It's hours, minutes, then seconds. But in the US it's mostly
>> 12-hour time, not 24-hour time, though that may be changing.
>
>ObSF: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
>thirteen." (First sentence of 1984)
>
ISTR that some of the early town clocks were 24-hour.

/google

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_astronomical_clock

Meg got to visit Prague a few years ago (nursemaiding one of her
lawyer boss's elderly clients. I'll ask her if she saw this,
when she gets home. Odds are, she did.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

In article <r5txFw.184H@kithrup.com>,
Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <ss225m$sk$1@dont-email.me>,
>Gary McGath <garym@REMOVEmcgathREMOVE.com> wrote:
>>On 1/16/22 2:30 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
>>> No. It's hours, minutes, then seconds. But in the US it's mostly
>>> 12-hour time, not 24-hour time, though that may be changing.
>>
>>ObSF: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
>>thirteen." (First sentence of 1984)
>>
>ISTR that some of the early town clocks were 24-hour.
>
>/google
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_astronomical_clock
>
>Meg got to visit Prague a few years ago (nursemaiding one of her
>lawyer boss's elderly clients). I'll ask her if she saw this,
>when she gets home. Odds are, she did.
>
She did; but the clock was undergoing restoration at the time and
the dials were covered. But she did get to go up in the tower
and see all the machinery. And then she got to go through the
town hall and observe all the additions that had been made to it
over the centuries.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

On Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 2:30:25 PM UTC-5, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
> Rink <rink.hof.ha...@planet.nl> wrote:
> > American notation is highly illogical.....
> > Why do you first call the month, then the day and then the year?
> I agree that it's illogical. But it's what we're used to.
>
> Similarly with the "short scale," in which a billion means a thousand
> million rather than a million million. The US has always used it.
> Britain adopted it about half a century ago. Before that Britain used
> the more logical long scale, which I see that your country still uses.
> > Are digital clocks by you the same?
> > first the minutes then the seconds and then the hours ?
> No. It's hours, minutes, then seconds. But in the US it's mostly
> 12-hour time, not 24-hour time, though that may be changing. Some
> say it's irrational to have 60-second minutes and 60-minute hours
> but express those numbers in base 10. For a few years the French
> used 100-second minutes, 100-minute hours, and 10-hour days.
>
> It's interesting that time below seconds is decimal. Or rather base
> 1000. We use milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds, etc. (Nobody
> uses kiloseconds, megaseconds, gigaseconds, etc.) (Well, *I* do, but
> I'm weird.) But there's an older system, in which a 60th of a second
> is called a third, a 60th of a third is a fourth, etc. If you've read
> Copernicus, he even uses fifths, which is an impressively short time
> interval for the 16th century, which was before even the invention of
> the pendulum clock.

I did not know that about Copernicus.

However, we use terms like ' a quarter of a second'. Just not very often.
Most uses of sub second periods are fairly recent, and mostly in technical
and scientific contexts, where the metric system dominates.

Pt

On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 02:05:39 GMT
djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:

> In article <r5txFw.184H@kithrup.com>,
> Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote:
> >In article <ss225m$sk$1@dont-email.me>,
> >Gary McGath <garym@REMOVEmcgathREMOVE.com> wrote:
> >>On 1/16/22 2:30 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
> >>> No. It's hours, minutes, then seconds. But in the US it's mostly
> >>> 12-hour time, not 24-hour time, though that may be changing.
> >>
> >>ObSF: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
> >>thirteen." (First sentence of 1984)
> >>
> >ISTR that some of the early town clocks were 24-hour.
> >
> >/google
> >
> >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_astronomical_clock
> >
> >Meg got to visit Prague a few years ago (nursemaiding one of her
> >lawyer boss's elderly clients). I'll ask her if she saw this,
> >when she gets home. Odds are, she did.
> >
> She did; but the clock was undergoing restoration at the time and
> the dials were covered. But she did get to go up in the tower
> and see all the machinery. And then she got to go through the
> town hall and observe all the additions that had been made to it
> over the centuries.
>
It's still a bit out of date; the Earth orbits the Sun, not the other way around!

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.