Re: Timekeeping

In a message dated 10/2/98 10:20:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
raybrown@CLARA.CO.UK writes:

<<
 >Nobody's satisfactorily answered my question yet.  Why doesn't a "metric"
time
 >system even exist?  Is it because nobody can do the math?

 Of course they do the maths!!!!! It's not exactly high powered stuff - you
 multiply or divide by 10s or, if you stick strictly to SI system, you just
 worry about the thousands.

 Of course there just is no way the earth's daily rotation _and_ the solar
 year could both be fitted into such a system.  I guess no-one is going to
 abandon the day as a unit of time.  Ok, let's see......

 (a) Bigger units than the day.
 If we take the SI prefixes we get:
 1000 days = 1 kiloday
 1000 000 days = 1 megaday
 1000 000 000 = 1 gigaday etc.

 In practice, one would expect the kiloday to be subdivided, probably 100
 "metric weeks", each 'week', or more strictly 'decaday' being the French
 Revolutionaries' & ancient Egyptians 10 day 'week'.

 Now work that system through & decide what'd happen to annual reviews,
 financial years, progression from one year to another at schools & colleges.

 If you think you persuade the human race to change its habits, go ahead.

 (b) Smaller than the day.
 The day would be divided into 1000 milidays, each of which would be divided
 into 1000 microdays, and those into 1000 nanodays etc etc.

 This is IMHO an entirely feasible system in theory.  Indeed, as I said in
 an earlier mail, the French Revolutionaries did have proposals to divide
 the day decimally.

 The reasons that this has not been done IMO are that:
 1. The system is, in essence, a good 4000 years old and has become (almost)
 universally accepted & has clearly proved workable.
 2. The cost of changing all the world's time pieces, computers etc. to the
 new system would be astronomical.
 3. As it has been pointed out more than once, the second has become the
 standard SI unit of time and other SI units, e.g. the metre are defined in
 terms of the second.  A change to milidays, microdays, nanodays, would
 necessitate redifinition of otherb units and almost certainly quite costly
 readjustment and/or replacement of quite a bit of the world's scientific
 equipment.

 Ray.
  >>

I appreciate the lengthy response to my post, although frankly I believe that
your criticism of a single line at a time detracts from your argument as a
whole.  Quite a few of your rebuttals didn't mesh with my own experience, for
example when you said that most of the world uses the 1997-style calendar.
Granted they do, but in many a culture the Western calendar coexists with
another timekeeping system.  Most of the important festivals in China are
based on the lunar calendar.  Japan keeps records (for taxes and other things)
based on the current emperor.  The muslim festival of Ramadan floats around
every year.  These things exist side by side.

You said that the math involved wasn't terribly difficult.  Weren't you the
one who posted the definition of a meter as being the wavelength in vacuo of
the orange radiation of the krypton-86 atom  (only to have to it later
corrected as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time
interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.)  Easy to comprehend, maybe, but not
easy to come up with.

Your argument en totale seems strikingly similar to the reasons why most
Americans are reluctant to accept the metric system, i.e. change is bad.  And
so I am forced to repeat:  I have no intention of "persuading the human race"
to do anything.  Any system of measurements has perceived advantages.  That is
not to preclude the creation of new systems.   I'm just asking for people to
help me explore the issue.

All said, though, I _do_ like your system of nomenclature.  I imagine the
effects on the language:  "Shoppers!  Only two more kilodays until Christmas."