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Flowtime:
a form of decimal time
by Jesse Yoder
Most people take our time system for granted. If someone
asks “What time is it?” there usually isn’t a lot of controversy
about what system of time is being used. Nearly everyone worldwide uses a
common system of time based on 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes per hour, and
60 seconds per minute. The only relativity that enters the picture is that
the time is different depending on the time zone. So when it’s 8:00 am
in New York, for example, it’s 1:00 pm in London.
The origins of our 24 hour clock go all the way back to the
Egyptians and the Babylonians. The Egyptians divided the time from sunrise
to sunset into ten hours of daylight.
They also had two hours of twilight and twelve hours of night.
This system goes back as far as 1300 B.C.
The total is 24 hours per day, which we still have in our
time-keeping systems today.
The origin of our minute and second goes back to the
Babylonians. The Babylonians did their astronomical calculations in a base
60 system. The first
fractional place in this base 60 system we now call a minute.
The second fractional place in this system we now call a second.
It is amazing that, after 3300 years, we are still
operating on a system of time that was invented long before technology,
and 2600 years before the invention of mechanical clocks (around 1300).
Today we have many reasons to divide time into smaller and smaller units.
Flowtime recognizes this, and it offers a system of time that harmonizes
much better with our numbering systems in other areas of life. Most of
these are based on the idea of ten. Decimal systems are very intuitive
because we have ten fingers, and people find counting to ten on their
fingers to be very intuitive.
Flowtime: An alternative system based on decimal time
This article proposes an alternative time system based on
decimal time. While there are
clear advantages to having everyone be on the same time system, there are
also some important advantages to a decimal time system.
But first, what is the proposal?
The proposal for decimal time is to switch the counting of
minutes and seconds from sixty divisions to 100 divisions.
This proposal does not include any change in the number of hours
per day. It only proposes to
increase the number of minutes in one hour from 60 to 100.
Likewise, it increases the number of seconds in a minute from 60 to
100.
To easily convert from oldtime to flowtime, take the minutes
or seconds in regular time and multiply by 5/3 or 1.67. The result is the
minutes or seconds in flowtime. The hour remains the same.
An easy way to make the conversion is as follows: Take the
minutes or seconds in regular time and multiply that figure by 2/3. Then
add that value to the regular time value, and you have the flowtime value.
For example, if it's 1:15, take 2/3 of 15, which is 10. Add 10 to 15, and
you have the flowtime of 1:25.
What are the implications of this? It means that, under flowtime, instead of the time being 1:30
pm, it will be 1:50 pm. Instead
of 3:45 pm, the time will be 3:75 pm.
Here is a comparison of relative times:
Flowtime
Timetable
READ MORE:
What do you think of flowtime? Would you like to make the
switch from oldtime to flowtime? Let us know! Send an email to jesse@flowresearch.com,
or use our Feedback Form.
Copyright © 2002 - 2003; Flow Research, Inc.
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MORE AT WWW.FLOWTIMECLOCK.COM
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