
Decimated: What if Napoleon hadn’t abolished decimal time?  - unignorant
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15311296
======
Barnabas
The very end of the article mentioned hexadecimal time:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal_time>

I like the idea of the 16-hour day, the 256-minute hour, and the 16-second
minute. It makes at least as much sense as the divisions we have now; more in
certain circumstances.

~~~
moe
Just about any scheme would make more sense than the completely random
nonsense that we have now.

It's sad to see the gregorian calendar madness from over 400 years ago will
probably even be carried into the space-age.

 _For example, an intercalation scheme that intercalates single days and is
based on the mean Martian tropical year of 668.5921 days can be approximated
closely with a cycle of 45 leap years in 76 years because 66845⁄76 ≈
668.592105 and 0.5921 × 76 = 44.9996._

Easy, huh?

Well, here's more: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_Mars>

------
Raphael
The current system is actually quite convenient. You can divide hours and
minutes by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 12.

~~~
mortehu
And the main reason why we want to divide hours, is that we want to make
beautiful clock faces.

The software I use for logging hours uses decimal fractions for minutes. Also,
neither bc nor python has a reasonable syntax for summing 0:23 + 1:50.

~~~
Raphael
There's no timespan class?

~~~
vegai
That's not syntax.

------
ars
Misleading title - doesn't answer the question.

