Internet Time Ticks On At Swatch

from the the-esperanto-of-its-time dept

You may remember (though, you're no worse off if you don't) that a few years back, Swatch (the watch makers) announced that they were promoting the idea of "Internet Time", which would divide the day into 1000 "beats", with the first beat starting at midnight in the timezone of Swatch's headquarters in Switzerland. The idea was that, instead of having to deal with timezones, and such, we'd all just constantly be on Internet Time - the same time, throughout the world. As you probably have figured out, that didn't really catch on with too many people. However, it turns out that a few people believed strongly in the concept, and five years after it was announced, the folks at Swatch still suport Internet Time - and are still selling watches with Internet Time (all of which, conveniently, can switch over to regular time with the push of a button). Most of the other early adopters, though, have let that part of their lives move on, with one declaring that, "Internet Time was definitely the Esperanto of time."

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    I remember that

    identicon
    Dr_Stein, May 14th, 2003 @ 3:31pm

    perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea. Might have kept me from being late a time or two ;)

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Stalin tried it

    identicon
    dorpus, May 14th, 2003 @ 5:34pm

    He tried dividing the day into 10 hours, a year into 10 months, didn't work.

    Libya under Qadaffi has its alternative Islamic calendar in which they are a few hundred years ahead of other Muslim nations.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Swatch has a Palm PDA clock program for this!

    identicon
    Tobias Robison, May 15th, 2003 @ 7:22am

    You can dopwnload a 1,000 ticks a second clock for your palm pda at: http://www.swatch.com/alu_beat/index_section.php

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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