this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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the clock and the AM/PM system makes much more sense when you count from 0.
0am 1am 2am 3am ... 11am
0pm 1pm 2pm 3pm ... 11pm
instead of:
12am 1am 2am 3am ... 11am
12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm ... 11pm
the ancient people that invented the clock were programmers all along??
you may find comfort in knowing that in a mathematical sense, its reasonable to say 12am=0am.
this is because 12 hour clocks use modular arithmetic. doing arithmetic modulo 12 is basically the same thing as doing normal arithmetic with the whole numbers, except you add in the rule 12=0. for example, modulo 12, we have 15 = 3 + 12 = 0 + 3 = 3. (this explanation of modular arithmetic comes from viewing it as “normal addition” in a quotient ring.)
This, basically a lot of things were based on 12 in the olden times. But since the French were against everything British, including their imperial system they based their metric system on base 10. I heard there were even clocks in France that had only 10 hours
There was decimal time, with 10 hours of 100 minutes, and a prototype of metric time, with the day as the base unit.
12 hours can be evenly split into halves, thirds, fourths and sixths, but naah, apparently is better to only have ten to split it into halves and fifths (who uses fifths anyway) is better right?
You can split ten by any number you wish. That's the beauty.
I mean, that's the argument for feet vs meters lol
It has nothing to do with French. The decimal digit notation was invented in ancient India, then it got adopted by the Arab world and finally reached Europe in the 10th century. But even before so called Arabic numerals ancient Romans were using decimal system as well and their Roman numerals are also based on decimal system.
Thus people all over the world agree that the decimal system is superior, since the ancient times.
It's probably that way because the system of time predates the invention of zero as a concept by a millennia or two.
Everyone here assumes that midnight=12a.m. is valid everywhere but in a lot languages this is not the case (German and French just to name two). So maybe this is just something weird English speaking people do...
You're making me want to make a new clock that has a 0 at the top and a 23 to it's left.
I've seen it before (well i think it was 24, not 0), but 24h analog clocks are a thing