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.
For the people where 24h time is normal …. Is that a more recent development it’s the ubiquity of digital clocks, or would people have also used 24h time with analog clocks, despite them not having a way to display that?
—- looking around, realizing I still hav analog clocks all over because I wanted my kids to be familiar with them. That boat sailed
I have owned multiple analog watches with a 24 hour face so it isn’t like they don’t exist they just are far from common place.
So 30 minutes is 12?
Yes, like this - https://www.aaawatchclub.com/images/1003b24pbd_1000.jpg
That’s a sexy watch.
There are watches that have an actual 24hr face as you describe the normal 6 position is 12 and 12 becomes 24. Which I think are fairly uncommon, I don’t recall ever seeing one in person.
More common to just see analog watches with dual time markings say a 24 under the 12.
An image search along the lines of “24hr watch face” will show some examples.
Yes they are pretty uncommon, all the ones I have owned were old Russian ones that could be pretty unreliable and watch makers never wanted to touch them in terms of repairing them, hence why I have had a few. I believe the ones I had were made by ‘Raketa’
As someone who really needs to visualize my day, I love phone and watch apps that use a 24h watch face. It’s very logical to display sunrise/sunset times and I even found an app that displays my calendar events as time slices in my clock pie.
Always wanted to pick up a cool analog 24h watch too.
What app?
Probably Sectograph. I’ve used it for a couple years and I like it a lot. You can even have it on your smart watch.
Yep, Sectograph, it has some annoyances, but generally very good. I never understood the flags and why it would use them instead of a pie piece for longer events. I wanted to get a big circular led display and make a sectograph wall clock, but the prices for circular led screens scared me off before I got started.
I’ve been born in central Europe in the 80’s before digital clocks became the norm. 24h was normal even then when writing the precise time. For example in TV schedules. When talking we normally use 12h but without adding AM or PM as it most often is obvious from the context. When it’s not then we add “in the morning” “at night”. Actually speaking time in a 24h format is very rare. But since it’s always encountered in writing, every child learns very early how the 24h system works.
Fascinating. Here in the US it seems similar when talking, but I almost never see 24 hour time, even in writing, except in “military” or similar context. Plus I really haven’t noticed any changes in these habits during my adult lifetime.
we have analog clocks because my wife has forbidden us from living in a minimalist glass and chrome cube where the only decoration is neon lighting and we only wear latex body suits and sunglasses indoors 😿
You have a very cool picture of the future though
In Brazil it has just always been this way. We have normal 12h clock faces and we are used to both 24h and 12h time. The curious thing is that we are used to read and write in 24h, but in speaking the vast majority uses 12h. Probably because it’s shorter to say “nove e meia” than “vinte e uma e trinta” for 09:30/21:30