10 ms·

I'm curious, are there any other notable time measurement systems other than the ones listed here?

by ayaros 2mo ago

InsideOutSanta 2mo ago
Swatch Internet Time was almost kind of a thing in the late 90s.
- ginko 2mo ago
  I almost think that one was a bit too early. Having a "universal" way to share time that's not timezone ambiguous would be pretty handy these days.
  - vova_hn2 2mo ago
    Why not use UTC?
    - ginko 2mo ago
      Because then you have to add that you mean UTC since the time format looks like local time. With beats it's obvious from the formatting that it's internet time.
      - weberer 2mo ago
        Just add a Z at the end. For example 19:18Z. Its standard in military time and ISO 8601.
  - ArekDymalski 2mo ago
    I used to think the same, as I was fascinated with the Swatch Beat time concept. Until I read this: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish - the brilliant argument against universal time.
helterskelter 2mo ago
You used to look at the sun or stars to make an estimate, then we had sundials. For larger time scales, there are tons of archaelogical sites around the world which tracked the solstice, equinox, etc and there's evidence that a few cultures even tracked the full period of the moon's orbit (18.6y). ~250BCE, there was a comedy by Plautus which had in it a poem lamenting the proliferation of sundials, which may or may not have been a parody of some of the attitudes at the time: The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sundial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions! When I was a boy, My belly was my sundial -- one surer, Truer, and more exact than any of them. This dial told me when 'twas proper time To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat; But nowadays, why even when I have, I can't fall to unless the sun gives leave. The town's so full of these confounded dials The greatest part of the inhabitants, Shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the street.
- pavel_lishin 2mo ago
  Any mention of sundials reminds me of this funny bit I saw elsewhere online: > “what time is it” you ask, i pull out my 2.7 metric ton granite sundial and immediately crush both of your feet, I loudly announce “it is cloudy”
Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
Yes, people make up silly things for silly reasons all the time. All core systems should run on 64bit UTC posix Epoch date-time stamps, and abstract that into whatever ISO 8601 format local communities think is effective policy. If finer granularity is required to recreate events in non-real-time analysis, than additional sampling interval data with event ordering indexes become relevant. The Metrology around how a Second was (re)defined is actually really interesting. Considering it started as an arbitrary interval originally derived from some dudes heartbeat. =3 https://www.nist.gov/atomic-clocks/how-atomic-clocks-work/clocks-galore https://www.nist.gov/atomic-clocks/how-atomic-clocks-work/cl...
ginko 2mo ago
There's for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeeping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeepin...
vova_hn2 2mo ago
I find unequal hours [0] interesting. Basically, day (from sunrise to sunset) and night (sunset to sunrise) are each divided into 12 equal periods. But night hours and day hours are, of course, not equal to each other and changing throughout the year. You can make a computer implementation by pulling astronomical sunset/sunrise times for a specific geographical location and then it's a simple arithmetic to convert from modern hours to horae temporales [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_hours

I'm curious, are there any other notable time measurement systems other than the ones listed here?

by ayaros 2mo ago

I'm curious, are there any other notable time measurement systems other than the ones listed here?

InsideOutSanta 2mo ago

Swatch Internet Time was almost kind of a thing in the late 90s.

ginko 2mo ago
I almost think that one was a bit too early. Having a "universal" way to share time that's not timezone ambiguous would be pretty handy these days.
- vova_hn2 2mo ago
  Why not use UTC?
  - ginko 2mo ago
    Because then you have to add that you mean UTC since the time format looks like local time. With beats it's obvious from the formatting that it's internet time.
    - weberer 2mo ago
      Just add a Z at the end. For example 19:18Z. Its standard in military time and ISO 8601.
- ArekDymalski 2mo ago
  I used to think the same, as I was fascinated with the Swatch Beat time concept. Until I read this: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish - the brilliant argument against universal time.

helterskelter 2mo ago

You used to look at the sun or stars to make an estimate, then we had sundials. For larger time scales, there are tons of archaelogical sites around the world which tracked the solstice, equinox, etc and there's evidence that a few cultures even tracked the full period of the moon's orbit (18.6y). ~250BCE, there was a comedy by Plautus which had in it a poem lamenting the proliferation of sundials, which may or may not have been a parody of some of the attitudes at the time: The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sundial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions! When I was a boy, My belly was my sundial -- one surer, Truer, and more exact than any of them. This dial told me when 'twas proper time To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat; But nowadays, why even when I have, I can't fall to unless the sun gives leave. The town's so full of these confounded dials The greatest part of the inhabitants, Shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the street.

pavel_lishin 2mo ago
Any mention of sundials reminds me of this funny bit I saw elsewhere online: > “what time is it” you ask, i pull out my 2.7 metric ton granite sundial and immediately crush both of your feet, I loudly announce “it is cloudy”

Joel_Mckay 2mo ago

Yes, people make up silly things for silly reasons all the time. All core systems should run on 64bit UTC posix Epoch date-time stamps, and abstract that into whatever ISO 8601 format local communities think is effective policy. If finer granularity is required to recreate events in non-real-time analysis, than additional sampling interval data with event ordering indexes become relevant. The Metrology around how a Second was (re)defined is actually really interesting. Considering it started as an arbitrary interval originally derived from some dudes heartbeat. =3 https://www.nist.gov/atomic-clocks/how-atomic-clocks-work/clocks-galore https://www.nist.gov/atomic-clocks/how-atomic-clocks-work/cl...

ginko 2mo ago

There's for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeeping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeepin...

vova_hn2 2mo ago

I find unequal hours [0] interesting. Basically, day (from sunrise to sunset) and night (sunset to sunrise) are each divided into 12 equal periods. But night hours and day hours are, of course, not equal to each other and changing throughout the year. You can make a computer implementation by pulling astronomical sunset/sunrise times for a specific geographical location and then it's a simple arithmetic to convert from modern hours to horae temporales [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_hours