Why don't we have metric Time?

Question

I mean subzero time is calculated in metrics (ie- millisecs etc) why not change all time to metrics - eg. a day is divided into say 20 hours of 100 minutes/hr etc etc. It would make time calcs alot easier

Answer 1

yep but its the way its always been and its based on lunar cycles and orbiting the sun.

Answer 2

It was tried at the time of metricisation in France (18th C) but people - average people - resisted the idea very strongly.

The concept also had a revival in the late 19th C but again, it met with popular resistance.

Nowadays it would be even harder because "technological time" (i.e. computers, watches, VCRs, medical equipment, airports, etc that all incorporate time pieces/calculators of some sort) is so much more common than it was 100 years ago that the cost of conversion for minimal benefit would be too much.

Finally, of course, we can never fully metricise time - a "day" can be broken into 10 or a 100 hours but a "year" will always be 365.24 days (unless you want to change our orbit!) and it is such a fundamental unit that we can't ignore it (seasons, etc).

The lunar month is already generally ignored except in some religious circumstances (e.g. Poya days in Sri Lanka, start of Ramadan, Easter, etc) that we could change the month but the killer would be:

a) The unchangeable year

b) A lack of obvious reason to do so

Answer 3

Likewise weeks etc would be easier but it's like changing from driving on one side of the road to the other - loads of effort, loads of potential problems and for what?

As for making time calcs easier - I think Microsoft cracked that a long time ago (metric or otherwise)

Answer 4

It's sth I haven't thought  about

and haven't searched

Answer 5

It is a matter of habit and convention.

Answer 6

The time system that you are used to (24hr/day) will be referred to here as Anglo-Babylonian Time (ABT). The reason for the Babylonian part was mentioned above. The Anglo is there because the system in its current form has been associated with the British (Greenwich and all that.)