Decimal Time Keeping

[MakeItHappen 15]

I am taking a fictional story writing course online.
This is my second story.
Let me know what you think.


Decimal Time Keeping

The metric system is supposedly superior to the English measurement system because the arithmetic is easier.

For time keeping, we have a very strange calendar. It was originally 10 months. Then a couple of months were added and it became 12 months per year.

The time keeping of today is inadequate because we still have to 'correct' the system every 4 years with a 'leap year.' We have to add in an extra day because the year, months and days do not really reflect the physics of the situation.

For your consideration, what if the solar year - that exact amount of time that it took the planet Earth to orbit the sun - was divided into 10 equal time slices, that we would call 'months'. Then each of those time slices was divided into some multiple of 10. IOW, say it was 10 'days' per month or 100 'days' per month.

Then each of the 'days' was divided into 10 or 100 'hours'. Each of the 'hours' was divided into 10 or 100 'minutes'. Then each 'minute' was divided into 10 or 100 'seconds'. After that we could go decimal easily, as we do today, with milliseconds, picoseconds and nanoseconds.

It would be so much easier to keep track of time. Well, the arithmetic would be easier.

The big drawback is that the time you 'wake up' or the time you 'go to work' would vary from day to day. (I wonder what new alarm clocks would do?) This is a result of the disparity between the Earth's rotation and the arbitrary division of the solar year, months, days and minutes into 10 or 100 intervals.

That suggests a way to 'fix' the system. Instead of dividing the 'months' into 10 or 100 time slices, divide the solar year by the time interval of the Earth's rotation. That would give you the exact number of 'days' on Earth per 'year'. In the physics world, this is called 'normalization'.

But wait a minute! The political correctness of this solution is compromised. Martians will claim discrimination. Why shouldn't the solar year be based on the Martian orbit and the Martian day?

The Earthlings over-rule the Martian objection because life on Mars has not yet been proven.

So civilization creates a time system based on the Earth's rotation. That seems like a great idea. Many billions and billions of years later it is noticed that the Earth's rotation is not constant. It has been slowly diminishing over the millenniums.

Oh crap - what do we do now? There must be some sort of 'universal' time standard.

Scientists across the planet Earth search for such a standard. They take years and years to search for such a standard. To date, no such system has been established.

In the meantime, the everyday 'algebra-challenged' and 'fraction-challenged' people use the arcane system of 365 days per year, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes to an hour, 60 seconds to a minute and add a day every 4 years to compensate system.

Then the math teacher asks 'Is time keeping base 24, base 60 or base 10?'

It's a 'trick' question. Don't answer it, you can only get it wrong.

Or you could try saying 'It is 10.5 right now.' Instead of '10:30'. That may get you a point.

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Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

[monkycndo 0]

I like the idea. You get my vote.

Because we not only have to make a correction every 4 years by adding a day, but we actually over correct. So every 100 years we skip adding a day to make up for the over correction. This is done on the "double zero" years, 1800, 1900, etc. So why didn't we do it in 2000. Well, because after 10 100 year cycles, we have over corrected again. So you recorrect the overcorrection by having a leap day on years with the "triple zero", 2000.

Yes, I was confused the first time I heard it as well.

I can remember stuff like this and I can't remember to take out the trash on trash day, which actually happens every Friday.

50 donations so far. Give it a try.

You know you want to spank it
Jump an Infinity

[Zing 2]

Jan ... I think you're just wasting time with this one.

Zing Lurks

[billvon 2,400]

>That suggests a way to 'fix' the system. Instead of dividing the 'months'
>into 10 or 100 time slices, divide the solar year by the time interval of the
>Earth's rotation. That would give you the exact number of 'days' on Earth
>per 'year'. In the physics world, this is called 'normalization'.

Except that over the years, that "leap day" problem would manifest itself again. After a few decades, December (or whatever the new month is called) would happen when the days were longest and it was 95 degrees out.

Besides, why divide everything by 10? Just because we have 10 fingers and 10 toes? 10 is hard to divide. 10 divided by 2 is 5, divided by 4 is 2.5. How about 3? That's 3.33333 something. What about by 8? That's 1.25. By 9? That's a harder one. 1.11111. So if you have 10 minutes in an hour, and you want to give each of 9 speakers equal time, you give them 1.1111 minutes?

If you want a number to use, how about 360? Check it out:

360/2 = 180
360/3 = 120
360/4 = 90
360/5 = 72
360/6 = 60
360/8 = 45
360/9 = 40
360/10 = 36
360/12 = 30

etc etc. (Which, of course, is why it's used for navigation.) Presents a lot of possibilities when it comes to dividing up the days.

[MakeItHappen 15]

Quote

>That suggests a way to 'fix' the system. Instead of dividing the 'months'
>into 10 or 100 time slices, divide the solar year by the time interval of the
>Earth's rotation. That would give you the exact number of 'days' on Earth
>per 'year'. In the physics world, this is called 'normalization'.

Except that over the years, that "leap day" problem would manifest itself again. After a few decades, December (or whatever the new month is called) would happen when the days were longest and it was 95 degrees out.

Besides, why divide everything by 10?

exactly my point.

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Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

[MakeItHappen 15]

Quote

Jan ... I think you're just wasting time with this one.

yeah, I think you are right.

fuck it - it'll just go into the 'obscure writings file'

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Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

[Lindercles 0]

To be called a story, wouldn't it have to have a plot?

[quade 3]

I understand it's only a story but, you lost me almost immediately due to my knowing the "real" story.

Quote

It was originally 10 months.

Never. Not on ANY calendar that I've ever heard of. Months were originally derived from . . . Moons . . . a period of about 29.5 days. 12 months per year makes sense because it's "about" right and also works, more or less, with the seasons. 4 seasons each lasting 3 months = 12 months.

Decimal time, in any units longer than a solar day, just don't make any sense whatsoever.

If you want to break a day up into 10 periods, fine by me, but it's silly to even think about breaking up a solar year into 10 equal parts.

Lastly, there simply is no good basis for "time" that works across all planets. Maybe you could use the radio active decay of some universal isotope as a basis, but certainly nothing as simple as the rotation of the earth or the earth around the sun.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[kallend 1,625]

Quote

After a few decades, December (or whatever the new month is called) .

Well, I don't know but it seems to me that Dec-ember is a pretty good name for the 10th month.

I'd also suggest Sept-ember for the 7th, Oct-ober for the 8th, and Nov-ember for the 9th.

I wonder why no-one ever thought of that before

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[MakeItHappen 15]

Quote

Quote

It was originally 10 months.

Never. Not on ANY calendar that I've ever heard of.

Quade, I'm surprized at your lack of knowlegde and inability to go research this information.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/history-of-august.html

no clicky for you.

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Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

[quade 3]

Quote

Quote

Quote

It was originally 10 months.

Never. Not on ANY calendar that I've ever heard of.

Quade, I'm surprized at your lack of knowlegde and inability to go research this information.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/history-of-august.html

no clicky for you.

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Jan, not to put too fine a point on it, but where in the world did you get the idea that there were only 10 months based on that web page?

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[MakeItHappen 15]

Quote

Jan, not to put too fine a point on it, but where in the world did you get the idea that there were only 10 months based on that web page?

A long time ago I learned that the original version of the calendar we use only had 10 months - sorry I don't have the original citation or that history book from 6th grade. Then 2 months were added. That link was a quick google for the info.

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Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

[quade 3]

Quote

That link was a quick google for the info.

Perhaps you shouldn't Google so quickly then since it didn't provide any substance to back your claims.

I think you can look at a LOT of ancient calendars from Sumerian, Mayan to Chinese and you're not going to find much of anything that has the year divided up into 10 months except some wacky Roman calendar that was so far off it could hardly be called a calendar at all since it simply omitted about 60 days at the end of the year.

The other ones I mentioned pre-date that by thousands of years and were far more accurate.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Zing 2]

A somewhat lengthy, but entertaining missive about the months of the calender originally part of a response written to a question for an in-house publication for Horizontal Airlines.
The author has been dEd fro as long as I've known him.

But about all our screwed up months, especially February. That's a rather good story.
I guess it starts with what a month is supposed to be in the first place.
"Month" and "moon" are related as a measure of time. When a new moon is first seen, it appears as a thin crescent just after sunset. As the moon moves away from the sun in the following days, more of the sunlit side is seen, and the crescent fills out. When the moon reaches opposite the sun, we see the full sunlit disk. The disk then begins to flatten, then a crescent, then the crescent disappears in the sun, reappears on the other side as a thin crescent just after sunset, and a lunar month has passed. And the cycle repeats. The moon orbits the earth in about 27 and a half days. But because the earth is moving in its' own solar orbit, the moon has to go another two days to reach the same earth, sun geometry, and look the same. Since looking at the moon is what we do, or did before electric lights and television, the moon appears to orbit every 29 and a half days, a lunar month. A good moon watcher could tell what day it was in a lunar month by the shape of the sunlit part, and it's position against the background stars. Though we may think of the moon as stationary when looking at it, it actually moves a full diameter against the background stars every hour. (Here's one of those bet you two bits you won't believe it questions. How long does it take the moon to move a full diameter in the sky from earth's rotation? Two minutes. Almost exactly. Though moon motion is readily seen at the horizon, atmospheric effects make it look a lot slower.) Until recently, moon watching was an important method for tracking time. Though it can be overdone. If you get too much lunar light, you could become a "lunatic".
But keeping track of the solar year, on which the seasons depend, was much more important. Tracking the seasons, was critical for success at agriculture. Without a Safeway around the corner, this could be a life and death matter for ancient peoples. This solar year is about 365 days, six hours long. But a lunar year is only 354 days. (12 lunar months of 29 and a half days each.) This makes coordinating moon watching and solar year tracking a big problem over time, and the ancients put much effort into trying to do it.
Because accurate solar year tracking was important for survival, it was relegated to that special cast, the high priests. Throughout human history the high priests, Buddhist monk, Catholic bishop, Shinto priest, the African witchdoctor, Indian medicine man, etc., have all had pretty much the same functions in their societies. One of these was the keeping of the calendar. As with a carnival barker, skill at chicanery often affected the perceived level of success. But the high priests were usually the more intelligent, and were the scientists, doctors, and astronomers. So how did the high priests get twelve lunar months, 354 days, aligned with the 365 plus day solar year?
One system used with some success was an eight-year period in which 99 moon cycles occurred, with an error of about a day and a half. That is, in eight solar years, 99 lunar months occurred. A month error would build up about every 160 years. A more accurate system that appears frequently in ancient history was the 19 solar year cycle, in which 235 moon cycles occurred. It has an error of only about two hours in 19 years, about the best the ancients could do, and quite acceptable at the time. The Chinese may have been the first, more than 4000 years ago. They called it the "chang". (I know. The Chinese call everything 'chang'. No I can't prove it, but that's what I've read.) The Hindus and Babylonians used it. There is evidence that the Maya, an ancient people of the central Americas, used it too. The Anacazii, an advanced society in the American southwest, may have employed it as well.
Both the Greeks and the Romans discovered the 19 solar year, 235 moons relationship independently. But for the Romans, it appears the discovery was made about the same time they got it from the Babylonians. This was important because the Romans employed it the way the Babylonians did. In the Babylonian calendar, each month was one moon cycle. Of the 19 years in the cycle, 13 years were 12 moons. The other six years were 13 moons, spaced about every three years. The exact years that had 13 moons were quite specific. Except for the two-hour error every 19 years, the calendar never got more than 20 days ahead or behind the solar year.
In a recent survey of great minds and thinkers, a question asked was what are the ten most important books in human history. The results varied of course. The Bible was a frequent choice. But the most frequently mentioned was The History of the Holy Roman Empire. Rome was established in 754 BC. Maybe 753 BC. (We really don’t know. But this is close.) The first emperor was Romulus. Which is why we call it Rome, and the people, Romans. The original Roman calendar only had ten months. The first month of the year was March, for Mars, the Roman god of war. (We might have had a day of the week named Marsday. But that went to the Saxon god of war, Tiw. The third day of the week is Tuesday.) There was however, good reason to make March the first month of the year. The days are getting longer, and about March 21, the daylight starts getting longer than night. This is about when the winter weather starts to break, and one could start doing the things needed to survive another year. What better time to start the new year.
With March the first month of the year, that made September the seventh. September, October, November, December. Seven, eight, nine, ten. From the Latin words, septem, octo, novem, decem. The original Roman calendar had only ten months. They ignored the next two lousy weather months, not even named, and just allowed that time to pass. And then started a new year with March again. The next Roman Emperor Numa Pompilus, moved the start of the new year to the end of December. There was good reason to start the New Year here too. From late June the days start getting shorter. They finally stop getting shorter about December 22. If the days did not stop getting shorter, we would all die. In virtually all societies in human history, there was great relief, and celebration, when the days stopped getting shorter. With the days getting longer again, the weather would eventually improve, and one would at least have the opportunity to survive another year. It is no accident that so many of our holidays, celebrations, partying, and general whooping it up is done when the days stop getting shorter. We celebrate Christmas on December 25. We really don't have a clue what day Christ was born. We don't even know the year. But it fits nicely with when we do our serious partying. Even that most important celebration of all, Superbowl Sunday, is in the same timeframe.
Anyway, Emperor Numa proclaimed the start of the year to be January first. He named the month January, for the oldest Roman god, Janus, and an appropriate choice. Janus had a face on the back of his head, as well as on the front. He could see back into the past as well as look into the future at the same time. Passing through this gateway into the New Year, people sought to improve themselves, much like we might check ourselves in the mirror before stepping out to greet our customers. At New Year's, the citizens might clean their houses, make amends with their neighbors, settle personal differences, pay their debts, etc. We still follow this tradition today with new-year's resolutions, which don't work very well either. But you still personally know a Janus. He has a hundred keys ring on his belt. It’s his indication of authority about what he does. You rely on him to let you in and out of buildings, and to maintain them as well. It’s where we get our word ‘janitor.’
The start of the New Year bounced between March and January as various attempting rulers slugged it out. About 150 BC for the last time, the new year start was set on one January, although another source says Julius Caesar did the final move about a hundred years later, along with other calendar rearranging. I said the Romans adopted the Babylonian calendar. This worked well, as long as the plan, cut in stone (literally) was followed. There was one minor but significant difference. The high priests charged with the keeping of the calendar, were now elected political officials. Though the order of the twelve and thirteen month years was cut in stone, it was still the function of the high priests to make the declaration, with great fanfare and pompous formality. And much like our political conventions today, have little to do with the reality. If their party was in power, it would be a 13 month year. If the opposing party was in power, it would be proclaimed a 12 month year (The elections came up sooner). Political deals, payoffs, bribes, etc. became part of the process. As a result the calendar was gyrating all over the place.
In 46 BC the calendar was 80 days ahead of the sun. Julius Ceasar was in charge. A bit of an amateur astronomer, he was getting tired of these shenanigans. During a trip to Egypt, he was impressed with the simplicity of the Egyptian calendar. The Egyptian year was 12 thirty-day months; 360 days, plus five days added on at the end of the year for partying, 365 days. (As previously noted, all societies party when the days stop getting shorter.) The Egyptian calendar was simple because around 3000 BC, they quit trying to keep the solar and lunar years aligned. They didn't need the moon. The only thing that mattered was the annual flooding of the Nile delta. The annual flood spread rich nutrients on the farmland, which in turn produced a good harvest. The precursor of the delta flood was the star Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius is a winter star, dominating the long winter nights. The name, Sirius (Egyptians called it Sothis) means shimmering, or searing. Not a big star, its' brightness is due to its' close proximity, a mere 50 trillion miles.
As winter turns to spring, Sirius moves closer toward the Sun. When Sirius is only visible a short while after sunset, the flood is coming. As Sirius merges with and is lost in the Suns' glare, it was believed that the searing heat of Sirius, merging with the Suns' heat caused the heat of summer. Sirius is in the constellation Canis Major, the great dog, companion of Orion the hunter. Thus "the dog days of summer". (I didn't make this up. Really.) Arf! The Egyptians had also long known that the solar year was a quarter day more than 365 days. But they simply didn't care. The only thing that mattered was the annual flood, precursed by the star Sirius approaching the sun.
Julius Ceasar was so impressed, he brought an Egyptian astronomer home with him to help straighten out the calendar in Rome, instituting the Julian calendar. He let 46 BC run 445 days to realign the calendar with the sun, known for obvious reason as the year of confusion. Conferring with his Egyptian, Ceasar confirmed the solar year six hours longer than 365 days, and instituted leap year every four years. But instead of 12 thirty day months, and five days added on for celebration as the Egyptians had done, Ceasar sprinkled the five days through the year, making five months of 31 days, and seven months of 30. And they continued to party at the end of the year anyway. (All societies party when the days stop getting shorter.) Having done all this great stuff, Julius Ceasar decided to rename a month in honor of himself. Now if you could name a month for yourself, what would it be? Certainly not February. The seventh month is quite arguably the nicest month of the year. Past the summer solstice, it has nice long warm summer days. Sure enough, Julius Ceasar renamed the seventh month July, after himself, Julius. And that is how July got its name. But alas, the new July had only 30 days, while five others now had 31. A ruler should not have a lessor month. That was easy enough to fix. He made July 31 days. By stealing a day from February. Why February?
The state of Alaska has a suicide rate that is about average. But in February the suicide rate spikes significantly. The long, cold, dark winters with everyone holing up awaiting better weather, starts affecting people, a condition known as cabin fever. The Romans, which had originally ignored the first two months altogether because the weather is lousy, still considered February a bad month. Unlucky. In a politically estute and publicly popular move, Julius Ceasar reduced the peoples' exposure to the unlucky month of February, by making it 29 days, and granting himself the 31day month of July.
This was now 45 BC. You may recall that in 44 BC, a guy named Brutis got into the act (“et to Brute?”). He along with maybe a dozen others murdered Julius Ceasar. A bloody civil war ensued for 13 years. Julius Ceasar's adopted son, Agustus, finally prevailed. And then pulled the same stunt as his stepfather. Not wishing to upstage Julius Ceasar, who was still popular, Agustus Ceasar renamed the next month August, for himself, Agustus. And that is how August got its name. But alas, the newly named month of August likewise had only 30 days. Having placed himself beneath his stepfather Julius, he decided his month should have 31 days to. Where did he get the extra day? Any idiot could guess. February! In another politically estute and publicly popular move, he further reduced the people's exposure to the unlucky month of February, by making it 28 days, and his newly named month of August, 31 days.
And that is how we got our screwed up calendar. Seven months of 31 days, four months of 30 days, and that unlucky month of February at 28 days. And July and August the only two months in the year with back to back 31 days, never mind the moon, and we party at the end of the year no matter what.
It's the politicians. The dang politicians. They screw up everthing! Even the calendar.

Zing Lurks

[popsjumper 2]

It's all so very simple. Just set the clocks on my morning routine. I'm very regular.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[dannydan 0]

ME TOO!... The first cup of coffee sets me on MY throne (since we're talking about Kings and Rulers lol) to. Then I am SET for the day ~ since we're talking about time...

But I am still cracking up over the peas, honey and knife..... just busting a gut!