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From: George Huxtable (no email)
Date: Mon Oct 18 2004 - 14:51:44 EDT
Jim Thompson wrote-
>Although we can think and write the term "2400", it has no practical
>meaning, is that right? As soon as the time advances past 23:59:59, then
>from a navigator's perspective the date changes to the next day, at time
>00:00:00.
To widen the argument somewhat, even more absurd is our common convention
of referring to times, in the hour after noon. as 12:xx pm, and the hour
after midnight, as 12:xx am, and the dials of clocks (and even
chronometers) marked accordingly, when in logic they should be 00:xx, and
zero-hour should be marked as zero.
Time has a history that goes a long way back, as is clear by the famiiarity
we have with clocks marked in Roman numbers. Without a symbol for zero, or
the idea that you could count and measure things starting at zero rather
than starting at one, how would you mark midday, logically, in Roman
numerals? Can't be done! So we have been stuck to an illogical numbering
for those two hours each day, even though, for most clocks, we have since
changed to an Arabic numbering system in which zero presents no problem.
To widen it further, isn't it another absudity that our date-of-the month
start at one, rather than zero?
As a result, calculating the interval between two events with known dates
and times, becomes a real nightmare, to do longhand or to write a program
to do it.
I will avoid refrain from discussing years, decades, centuries, and
millennia, in the interests of my blood-pressure.
George.
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contact George Huxtable by email at , by phone at
01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy
Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.
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