Your comment made me realize how we take for granted that everyone at least measures time the same way. Imagine the clusterfuck if there was metric time & imperial time.
Imagine we determined seasons based on the birds flying into a meadow in Japan
Or we measured days in quarters like Thailand (France forced their neighbours to use 24h time but since Thailand…then Ayutthaya and later Siam were never colonized they kept their weird clocks)
Russia never adopted leap years so that’s why Russian New Year is at a different time than the rest of us
Well, at least there are global events that correlate to the true seasons - equinoxes and solstices - that can be observed and measured anywhere in the world (except maybe at the geographic north and south poles? Not sure).
This is the sole reason why decimal time, which was also part of the metric system when it was first used, never caught on. The benefits of metric are that it’s unambiguous and standard, but that was already the case for time so there wasn’t any reason for it to change.
Worth noting though, parts of the world use a different calendar system, but AFAIK the Gregorian calendar is unambiguously the one used when communicating internationally. Good thing other calendars don’t share month names with it (I think?) and that no one uses the Julian calendar anymore.
Oh, the French did try to “metric” time for awhile when the metric system was just being developed and introduced. And even they decided that was a very bad idea. Turns out Mother Nature does not care about base10 all that much when it suits her.
On the other hand, it did lead to the saying that “The French follow no one and no one follows the French”
Your comment made me realize how we take for granted that everyone at least measures time the same way. Imagine the clusterfuck if there was metric time & imperial time.
Thank colonialism
Imagine we determined seasons based on the birds flying into a meadow in Japan
Or we measured days in quarters like Thailand (France forced their neighbours to use 24h time but since Thailand…then Ayutthaya and later Siam were never colonized they kept their weird clocks)
Russia never adopted leap years so that’s why Russian New Year is at a different time than the rest of us
Where did you get that about Russia? It’s incorrect
I should have been clear about it being adoption dates
Well, at least there are global events that correlate to the true seasons - equinoxes and solstices - that can be observed and measured anywhere in the world (except maybe at the geographic north and south poles? Not sure).
Just because it’s interesting, you can scroll through their seasons
https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00124/
There is metric day and UTC day.
This is the sole reason why decimal time, which was also part of the metric system when it was first used, never caught on. The benefits of metric are that it’s unambiguous and standard, but that was already the case for time so there wasn’t any reason for it to change.
Worth noting though, parts of the world use a different calendar system, but AFAIK the Gregorian calendar is unambiguously the one used when communicating internationally. Good thing other calendars don’t share month names with it (I think?) and that no one uses the Julian calendar anymore.
Oh, the French did try to “metric” time for awhile when the metric system was just being developed and introduced. And even they decided that was a very bad idea. Turns out Mother Nature does not care about base10 all that much when it suits her.
On the other hand, it did lead to the saying that “The French follow no one and no one follows the French”