Next message: Jim Thompson: "Re: 0000 not 2400?"
And is 12:00 p.m. midnight or noon?
It is strange that 12:30 p.m. is earlier than 11:30 p.m.
Gary LaPook
George Huxtable wrote:
>Jim Thompson wrote-
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>>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
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>>from a navigator's perspective the date changes to the next day, at time
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>>00:00:00.
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>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.
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>To widen it further, isn't it another absudity that our date-of-the month
>start at one, rather than zero?
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>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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