Next message: Gary LaPook: "Re: 0000 not 2400?"
George,
I'll widen things even a bit further. Why do we
have East and West longitude? Longitude should start
a 0.0 and proceed up to 359.999999999.. degrees just
as GHA does.
There is too much culturally induced confusion. I guess
that makes life more interesting.
--- CHAS
George Huxtable wrote:
> 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.
>
> ================================================================
> 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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>
