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    Re: 0000 not 2400?
    From: Gary LaPook
    Date: 2004 Oct 18, 12:30 -0700
    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-
    
      
    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
        
    >from a navigator's perspective the date changes to the next day, at time
      
    00:00:00.
        
    
    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.
    
    To widen it further, isn't it another absudity that our date-of-the month
    start at one, rather than zero?
    
    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 george@huxtable.u-net.com, 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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