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Comment by ProxCoques | Hacker News Reader

I get the impression Americans don't use 24-hour clock much. In Europe it's pretty much standard if you want to communicate time reliably. Or am I mistaken about the American love of am/pm?

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Your impression is pretty much spot on. We have "military-time" and "24-hour time" available to us in all of our application configurations, but no-one seems to use it. I do because it helps me do time-zone translating transforms to/from UTC in my head more easily, but also because I keep failing to see that little "PM dot" or set the "PM Flag" whenever dealing with times in various applications or alarms. Verbally, speaking with USians, 15.00 is always pronounced "3pm".

"Verbally, speaking with USians, 15.00 is always pronounced "3pm"."

It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'. 24 hour clock is merely for writing things down. I mean it would already be an improvement if the US would catch up with that, just saying that a 24 hour clock isn't said out loud as such. (not disagreeing or anything with you I guess, just adding some information).

> It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'.

Not really? In France it's perfectly normal to say "Rendez-vous à quinze heures" or "Le film commence à vingt-deux heures trente"

OK, it might be a social construct. I'd never say 'treize heures' to set a time with my Parisian colleagues, and neither would they (to the best of my recollection). Sometimes people would say it, yes, but it'd sound strangely artificial, like read literally from a schedule - which in many cases it would be.

In Quebec, 24 hour time has changed from being a nerd thing, to being the standard way of saying time. That's how the media pronounces time, how people write it down, etc. As others have mentioned, cell phones probably have something to do with that too.

This sometimes gets "localized" too, so you see " - Le film commence à vingt-deux heures trente. - The film begins at 10:30 pm. " on a bilingual sign.

Google Translate sometimes seems to know how to do this too.

> I'd never say 'treize heures'

One of the main midday newscast is called "Le journal de treize heures".

And the 8pm one is called le vingt heures. Really used everywhere.

I have the feeling that it is fairly recent. When I was a kid, I think that nobody used it regularly, then it started to be used on the radio and TV, and then, when I came back home after having spent 8 years abroad, I was surprised to hear it used by the average citizen.

I am not fond of it. It is heavy and in most use cases, doesn't bring more information than 1-12, because the context makes generally obvious to know if we're talking about AM or PM.

Okay okay I get it - you're all gently breaking it to me that I'm now officially old. I, too, used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too.

(sorry about that ;) )

> It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'.

And, as always, trying to generalize over a whole continent doesn't work out. It's perfectly fine in German or Polish to say "see you at fifteen".

It's uncommon in personal settings, though, at least in German. If you call your doctor to make an appointment, they might ask you if "fifteen thirty" suits you, but when fixing a time for meeting your friends at a café you'd say "halb vier" (half four, which is 15:30 in Germany, but 16:30 in the UK. Yay confusion!)

Actually, "Halb vier" (half four) can mean both in Germany, depending on which village you are in. It becomes even more confusing if you use something like "Viertel vier", which, depending on your village, can mean 15:15, 15:45 or 16:15.

This is why the less rural people over here use exact time.

Citation needed! I've never heard anyone use the "half past" meaning. The quarter thing is confusing, though. While I have never heard of anyone parsing "viertel vier" as 15:45 or 16:15, many people are confused as it's somewhat uncommon here.

Not sure why you feel the need to imply people using "half" are somehow impaired (as the attribute "rural" is often used to imply backwardness). The "half" notation is ubiquitous in the south.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uhrzeit#Sprechweise_im_Deutsch...

Same here in Norway. 3 p.m. is klokke femten.

> It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'.

Sorry but that is not how it works in Portugal.

We usually say 15.00 unless it is clear from context that 3 is 15.00.

For example if I am scheduling to meet for a coffee at 3, it surely isn't 3 AM.

Now if I am talking about meeting for something else at 10, and it isn't clear from context, usually I will be asked if I mean 10 or 22.

Besides AM / PM is something that we have to deal with in English based devices, that is it.

Let's meet at 15 o'clock" or "When do you go for lunch?" "thirteen-thirty" is totally daily usage in some places/groups (possibly age-related, since digital clocks here are always 24h and younger generations had more relative exposure to them)

> It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'.

Europe is not one country. In Sweden it's perfectly normal to say that.

While it is not uncommon to say "at three" instead of "at fifteen" in German, this only ever happens when context sufficiently avoids ambiguity. The language does not even know a generic qualifier for 12-based times (like am/pm), you would have to use the correct time of day name (non/afternoon/evening) for disambiguation. Much easier (and therefore much more common) to say "fifteen" instead. (for the second half, first half can only be specified the complicated way)

Sweden is fully on the 24 hour clock. We switched in the 70s.

We say "see you at 15" in Zambia.

Just thought I'd chime in here too.

No it's not, especially when you are talking about non complete hours(Half past three vs 2045)

The inprovement in question is pretty tenuous, beyond the bias of believing your preferences are superior.

Except for when it's pronounced "fifteen-hundred".

American English is all about factions. The use of 24hour time gives the impression that the speaker has ties to the military, which is a rather high percentage of the US population. I've had several people correct my use of 24-hour time (ie 0945) as being "dramatic" and that 9:45am is more "friendly". I had one person comment after a talk I gave (lots of slides with timestamps) that they thought I was talking down to the many military and former military people in the room. But the slides were originally created for Canadian university students. I'd used them several times north of the boarder. There, nobody noticed the timestamps as anything other than functional.

Whatever you do, don't mention metric time in the US. The 10-hour days and 100-day months that we find so normal drives them insane.

You are joking, but the French revolutionaries really tried to introduce 10 hour days (with a different value of "hour" obviously) broken into 100 minutes each (again not our minute) along with their new calendar.

They did that to break the control of the church, to do away with sundays. I've run into a couple people who still support the concept. I know one ardent atheist who doesn't like that we name days after Norse gods. Similarly, when I lived in the middle east some chuckled at the concept of an Islamic nation using pagan names on calenders. They don't want a 10-hour day, but both want to break from the old dogma.

> They did that to break the control of the church, to do away with sundays.

That was just an added bonus for the democratically elected Parliament to accept it, but it wasn't the initial reason.

Decimal time had mostly been pushed by mathematicians (d'Alembert decades before the Revolution, Borda who was the real ), and much later Poincaré, while the most important proponents of the decimal calendar were Romme and Dupuis (very far from being an atheist! though not a fervent Catholic either indeed) and respected scientists such as Lagrange and Monge.

The first and foremost reason was doing away with old arbitrary customs associated with the monarchy and replacing them with standards grounded into more universal, less arbitrary references.

That's the only reason I support it, for my part, and I doubt anyone in France cares now about having weekdays named after Roman gods. Even at the time of the Revolution I believe these names would actually have been somewhat appealing, as classical culture was seen then as a model with which to replace the despised monarchy and religious oppression.

You're correct. We call the 24-hour clock "military time" and basically no one uses it casually.

I do. Granted, I was in the military-I passively hate it when people call it 'military time' (passively meaning I mentally roll my eyes when someone says it), but I've been using it since middle school when I first even learned it was a thing. Mostly because it made sense right away.

There are 24 hours in the day.

Why are we recycling numbers in our time system?

No really, why?

Because there are only 12 major divisions on a clock. An analog clock, that is. It reads the same at 3am and 3pm. So from that pov it only makes sense to call it the same.

And the truth is that even when you live in a country where 24 hours notation is commonly used, like I do, you'll still more often say "5 in the afternoon", than 17 hours. The latter form is used in writing when you wish to sound more formal or when you really want to make sure there's no ambiguity. And not in the "army" style like 17 hundred, but you just say 17 or in written form 17h. All in all, it's just a matter of notation, once you're used to it sufficiently it translates to the clock face the same. Whether it's written as 13h or 1pm I visualise it exactly the same.

There are also analog clocks with 24 divisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_analog_dial

I guess 12 hour clocks are an easy trick to make them easier to read and manufacture and so on.

Sure, as a novelty. Who here has ever seen one like that in the wild? And yes, I think 24 is much harder to read, and not necessary either - in those situations where you don't know (when looking at a clock) whether it's 3am or 3pm, you have much bigger issues to worry about :)

My point was more in the second para, that 12 hour clocks aren't a platonic ideal, they are likely a result of practical demands. We make 12 hour dials rather than having them thrust upon us.

James Burke said in one of his shows that the 12 hour clock came in because it was ridiculous to have clock tower bells strike 24.

Wouldn't they strike zero, for 00h00 since there's no 24h00 after 23h59.59? Which, admittedly, would be rediculous ;)

I was wondering what the rationale was.

I love the idea of a 24 hour clock with 0000 at the bottom. Then the hour hand roughly follows the sun around all day, and a glance at the clock gives you the phase & time of day regardless of light cues or any other bits.

(Former submariner so a somewhat special case ;)

In the wild, not so much. But I have one in my home office---A nice one, purely mechanical (needs a key to wind it up). It's the second 24-hour clock I've had.

> Why are we recycling numbers in our time system?

Ever tried to read the clock on a sundial at night?

So that kids learn modular arithmetic ?

maybe it has something to do with sundials.

at a guess, its kinda the key size for hours

12/2=6, 12/3=4 work well, (with /4 and /6 being repeats of those)

24 hours doesn't add much on top of those divisions (you get /4 with a repeating /6 I guess)

I'm not immediately understanding, what are the divisions for? Parts/portions of the day?

People use the term "military time" interchangeably with "24-hour clock" if that helps.

People do, but also people might not. I can see offering the same setting but with two different labels, or like in a dropdown.

I find this comment unexpected, being Irish, as I would've associated the attachment to 12 hour intervals much more with here than with the US. But I guess it's a British colonial throwback thing; I'd be curious to hear of au/nz/ca/za/in/etc. habits.

For Canada:

In Quebec, the 24 hour clock is the norm.

Outside of Quebec, the 12 hour clock is the majority but a significant minority use the 24 hour clock. Everyone understands the 24 hour clock in my experience though.

24 hour time isn't unheard of in New Zealand but most people would use 12 hour time.

Unlike most of the imperial system, farenheit, etc, Am/pm seems to actually make some sense with analog clocks/watches. In places where you primarily use 24 hour time I guess you're always just translating from the clock in your head?

I suppose having grown up with 24-hour digital clocks since they first appeared in the 1970s, and most of the clocks around the house and on various devices being 24-hour digital, and using public transport which operates in 24-hour time, there is no "translation" that occurs, most Europeans are simply bilingual in 12/24 hour times.

1745 to me just means what 5:45pm means to you, but I never translate it in my head. In fact, if I'm texting someone older who I think might not naturally use 24-hour time, I have to translate to 12-hour time and it always feels odd to write the am/pm suffix.

Nope, cause everyone around means 15, when they say 15.

And everyone "gets" that all numbers after 12 are late-day.

15 only is odd if someone else is expecting to hear 3p

Or you just have a secondary dial. The watch I'm wearing right now has a major 1-12 dial and a secondary 13-24 dial. But my other watch has a 1-12 dial and a secondary 1-24 dial, with a funky secondary hour hand, so perhaps I'm weird:-)

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