Re: measuring systems (was: Selenites)

Raymond A. Brown wrote:
> Except, of course, if you have 10 months they'd presumably alternate 36 &
> 37 days a piece which makes any subdivision into groups of 10 awkward.
> Whichever way you go about it, it's difficult to decimalize 365.25 (approx)
> days.
Another reason is that 12 months divide up nicely into 4 seasons of 3
months.  10 months divides into 4 seasons of 2.5 months.  Not very nice.

> Yes, unlikely by that time.  I believe there was, infact, a proposal to
> divide the day (i.e. from midnight to midnight) into 10ths, 100ths, 1000ths
> etc.  It's quite feasible, of course.  But here the revolutionaries were up
> against a tradition of more than 3000 years.
And pure practicality.  Many buisnesses have 3 shifts for workers.  If
you had 10 hours/day, you'd need an unweildy 3 hours, 33 minutes, 33-1/3
seconds shift, or have one shift of 4 hours, and 2 of 3 hours.
Measuring time has a great advantage if you can easily divide it up.

I once devised a measuring system for an imaginary group of people
living in space.  Since there's no need to bother with orbital periods
and the like, they retained the 24-hour day.  But, they grouped the days
into 10-day units, 100-day units, and 1000-day units.  The 1000-day unit
was the equivalent of a year.  I don't remember what I called those
units, tho.  When recording a date, one would record 23.876 for the
877th day (begining at .000 for the first day) of the 24th "year"
(begining at 0 for the first "year").  Below the day, the 24-hour,
60-minute, 60-second system remained.

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