Alternative Units
Numerous proposals have been made for alternative base units of metric time. On March 28, 1794, the president of the commission which developed the metric system, Joseph Louis Lagrange, proposed in a report to the commission the names déci-jour and centi-jour (deciday and centiday in English). Base units equivalent to decimal divisions of the day, such as 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000, or 1/100,000 day, or other divisions of the day, such as 1/20 or 1/40 day, have also been proposed, with names such as tick, meck, chi, chron, moment, etc., and multiple and submultiple units formed with metric prefixes. Such alternative units have not gained any notable acceptance, however, mostly from sheer lack of acquaintance and familiarity.
A decimal second = 1/100 000 of a day = 0.864 s is an obvious alternative. Any redefinition of the second, however, creates conflicts with anything based on its precise current definition. Another unit for time, more familiar than some other suggestions, could be 14.4 minutes, i.e. a shorter quarter of an hour, or a centiday, as proposed by Lagrange. The centiday was used in China (called ke in Chinese) for thousands of years.
In the 19th century, Joseph Charles François de Rey-Pailhade proposed using the centiday, abbreviated cé, divided into 10 decicés, 100 centicés, 1000 millicés. and 10000 dimicés.
In 1897, the Commission de décimalisation du temps was created by the French Bureau of Longitude, with the mathematician Henri Poincaré as secretary. The commission proposed making the standard hour the base unit of metric time, but the proposal did not gain acceptance and was eventually abandoned.
Swatch Internet Time introduced a time unit called .beat, equal to the French decimal minute or 1/1000 day. However, there are no other units with metric prefixes.
Read more about this topic: Metric Time
Famous quotes containing the words alternative and/or units:
“If English is spoken in heaven ... God undoubtedly employs Cranmer as his speechwriter. The angels of the lesser ministries probably use the language of the New English Bible and the Alternative Service Book for internal memos.”
—Charles, Prince Of Wales (b. 1948)
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)