Why is it that Americans refer to 24 hour time as military time? I understand that the military uses the 24hr format but I don’t understand why the general public would refer to it like that?
It makes it seem like it’s a foreign concept where as in a lot of countries it’s the norm.
It’s interesting that it’s not as widespread amongst the public.As far as I know, the rest of the world either uses it or is able to understand it whereas I’ve had the opposite with Americans. I’m a very limited sample size though.
Americans understand it just fine.
Just like I understand what a meter is, but in real life, I would NEVER use the meter as a unit of measurement.
Yeah, I know metric is the better system, I agree. This isn’t about that. It’s about saying something and not making the listener take a moment to convert it into how they relate to the world.
Americans do not understand it just fine. I’ve had my phone on 24h time for years and the amount of fellow Americans who are completely baffled by it baffles me.
I’d say that’s probably more because they are morons and not because they are American.
I mean, can be both
Look up the “theory of American exceptionalism”. In short there is a very strong belief here that America is one of a kind and things that may work for others simply don’t apply here.
Explains why the US stocks a 12hr clock, messed up month/day/year mission, imperial measurement and a ton of other things that any foreigner will find anywhere from quirky to infuriating.
IMHO the exceptionalism theory is a b.s. lazy way of keeping things conservative and unchanged and shutting down any discussion of uncomfortable progress.
US and international date standards all suck : ISO8601 on the other hand is beautiful
It’s not even imperial measurements - the US has its own customary units.
There was a theory I read at one point, that for the life of me I can’t remember the name of, that basically described a generalized form of exceptionalism, but for different categories.
Basically, the “most something” countries in any particular category are going to have exceptional circumstances that make what other countries do not always apply.
India, having the largest population, faces demographic problems that solutions that work in the Netherlands just can’t address.
Same with Russian transportation infrastructure, and ultimately American economic issues.
Thank you for sharing that! I’ll have a look into it.
It’s standard in Canada as well. I prefer 24hr personally. There were a couple times where I’ve napped in the evening, and woke up thinking I was late for work in the morning. Not fun. 24hr clock solves that. Plus it just makes more sense to me than 12hr clocks.
I have no strong opinion but I’ll give some reasons that people don’t often consider.
Analog clocks are often easier to understand visually for people. A typical person will be awake for 16ish hours of the day. Which means that when looking at an analog 12 hour clock, you can easily see where you’re at in your day. That is both harder to do on an analog 24 hour clock and it also doesn’t make sense because you won’t really ever see 1/3rd of the clock get used. Military is forced to use it because the time is all digits which makes confusion less possible and displaying it easier.
When talking about the digital version, again, it reflects how humans experience time easier. Again consider using a clock in which you will not typically see or use a third of the numbers for anything. Why do that?
I think a lot of what bugs us about these two systems is the zero points. If I could redo it, I’d put 12am to line up and make 6am noon. Then 6pm is now evening/night.
I suggest that because the current 12hr systems are set up to benefit capitalism. It’s meant to make you forget how long you’re working in the US. And telling people that waking up at 5am to do stuff is morning is also stupid. It’s still night time at that time and our clocks don’t reflect that at all.
I’ve never even seen a digital clock that’s not 24h. I actually can’t see at all why it would be easier to see where you’re at in the day with the 12h AM/PM lol. Definitely an American thing.
I mean it’s a minor difference and you get used to both systems, but like I said, by cutting the scale in half from 24 to 12 you’re magnifying the difference in time. For instance, 3 to 6pm on 12 hour clocks is 25% of the scale whereas it’s actually 12.5% of the overall day on 24hr scale. But you don’t experience the overall day, you sleep for a big chunk of it. In other words, the 12hr clock is more appropriately representing that time to you as a portion of your waking day.
Consider this: if I told you the time in an accurate but larger quantity, how would it look to you? Like if I told you that my clock is 48 hours and resets every two days to go from 0 to 48, wouldn’t it change your perception of time? It creates dissonance that a 3 hour meeting would feel very long and yet it is such a small portion of your two day clock. That’s kind of how Americans feel about 24hr clocks.
You think you are magnifying things, but you aren’t.
The minute hand on an analogue clock goes equally as fast whether you use 24 hour or 12 hours.
In fact you are even losing accuracy, because if someone tells you to be there at 6 o clock, you have 2 possible times. Whereas with 24, there is only one possibility.
That is why you need to specify with AM and PM.
And in a digital clock it matters even less.
Now explain to me like I am 5, why does a 12 hour clock go from 11 PM to 12 AM to 1 AM?
Why is that 12th hour considered the start of the 12 hour cycle, instead of the end?
I guess I’ve become the 12hr clock simp here (I’m not tho, use whatever) so here I go.
Forget the minute hand. If I have a 24hr clock, the hours will be more crowded. Meaning that the per-hour angle of each number is halved. I’d imagine this somewhat limits clock design or runs the danger of being harder to tell which hour you’re actually on with a short hour hand. The numbers must be smaller and the hour hand must be longer for the same accuracy.
And yes you are losing technical accuracy with a 12hr clock. But a few things about this. Again it’s more about that humans actually experience time in smaller segments than 24 hours. You don’t experience a full 24hr day. You usually experience a smaller segment like 12-16 hours. This is especially true if you divide your time into day/night or work/leisure.
Now the obvious downside like you mentioned is the am/pm thing. However, that usually isn’t a problem and I don’t get how people would reference 24hr clocks in conversation. Do they say “yeah sure, we can grab drinks at eighteen hundred” or “eighteenth hour” or do they just say eighteen? (American problems).
It’s usually not a problem because context goes a very long way. If I ask you to grab lunch at 2, obviously it’s 2pm. If I ask to grab drinks at 8:30, it’s pm. Most social events come with a time context and most social events are in the afternoon. There’s surprisingly little overlap between events that would be early morning/late evening.
And yes I know digital clocks the formats matter less. It’s a preference thing, no one should care much.
As for the reason for 12 being the changeover time, it’s all for analog clocks. Looking at an analog clock, when determining the hour you draw a line out from the hour hand. Whatever is the nearest number counter-clockwise, that’s what hour it is. So the 12th hour exists. Otherwise you’d have it go from 11:59 to 0. And zero o’clock makes no sense, especially at noon. Again, no clue how anyone would reference this in 24hr. Half passed midnight maybe? But again if you can say pick me up from the party at 12:30am, you don’t have to reference midnight but people still do sometimes.
As for 12am vs pm, it’s simply because the clock transitions at its apex. If it didn’t, it’d be confusing. Also 11:59 is midnight in either system, so it’s the middle of the night. And it creates an obvious transition for midday to exist.
I hope that clears up why the system exists and why I personally prefer it. Again, use whatever works, but I promise the system works pretty well for everyone that uses it. The more disruptive thing is daylight savings time, not the system itself.
It’s definitely not standard in Canada. I wish it was. Every time I buy something, I have to figure out how to swap it to 24h mode.
Sorry, I meant 12hr is standard (agreeing with Nemo’s original comment).
It’s veeeeery not standard in Canada. I use it on my phone and most people who see it on the lockscreen treat me like I’m an alien, and it’s about a 50/50 mix of people who simply think 24 hour time is weird (but at least recognize it) vs. people who seem genuinely baffled by the digits they see appearing on my phone and don’t even seem to recognize it as a time at all.
I live in the US and I’ve never met someone who isn’t able to understand it. They might need to convert it in their heads to compare it with other times.
You’d think 24 hour watches would be more common than they are especially among European watches.
My kid had the hardest time reading a 12 hour clock. I think am/pm is too abstract for young kids. 24 hour makes more intuitive sense. The number resets only at the end of the day.
As far as I know the Japanese use it aswell. I learned 午後 and 午前 as vocab at least. (Am and pm)
We don’t use it in Canada, expect military or hospital records.
Quebec would like to have a word with you.
Then again they also have some opinions on that whole ‘Canada’ thing too.
There is a cultural phenomenon called schismogenesis - the tendency for one culture to define itself by how it differs from other cultures around it. Even in cases where the culture Y approach is “better” by whatever metric, culture X people will reject it because it’s a Y thing and not an X thing. I see the US rejection of the metric system under Reagan being the most glaringly obvious example of this, but the time thing is probably part of it, too.
I just really wish we hadn’t gone with the whole base 60 system in the first place.
I think I once read that when the metric system was first defined during the French Revolution, they also tried to use a decimal system for time, but that was quickly abandoned.
Why the hate for base 60? It has its roots in Babylon and also forms the basis for angles in geometry.
I am not a baseist. Some of my favorite algorithms are base-2.
Base 60 is so handy though. Very divisible.
I kind of wish we had gone all the way with base 60
Adding on to that most civilians are only exposed to 24 hr time in a field that was either organizationally based off of the military such as police or emergency medicine or in fields where it’s important to have precise time keeping like hospitals
We don’t use it in Canada, except military or hospital records.