The 24 Hour Clock

Why do we not use this? I recently switched my blog to display times on a 24 hour clock as it is just what makes sense.

If someone tells you they want to meet you at "8", typically you will have to ask "AM or PM?" Not on my watch (get it?), they just say "20:00" and you instantly know that it is during the night, unless you are not familiar with the 24 hour clock and you have to subtract "12" to find out what time this is. But seriously why do we not use this?

One reason is that in original "clocks" or simple ways to mark times, Egyptians divided the day into 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. Thus you would be counting up to 12 twice a day. However the only reason they used 12 is because of this:

The Eqyptians were fond of counting in base twelve (instead of base 10 which is commonly used today). This is thought to be because they counted finger joints instead of fingers. Each of your fingers has three joints, so if you count by pointing to finger joints with your thumb you can count to twelve on each hand. This might seem arbitrary, but is actually just a strange as counting in base ten simply because we have ten digits. -- Source

There are other theories as well as to why it was simply 12 hours, but at either rate it was 12 hours. In an ancient world it makes sense to know that if it is light there are only up to 12 hours left and that if it is dark the same as before.

But wait a minute! Are we not in a modern world? Why I think we are. This is why we should use a 24-hour clock, people are up at all different times with the invention of lights, computers, tv, etc which keep us up way past when we probably should be up, then have us sleep way past when we should get up. With our technological advances, there is no reason to just count "12 hours of night" or "12 hours of daylight."

Then of course you could wonder why we don't just switch to base 10 time if the world basically runs on a metric system except for the US. Well quite simply it would be a huge change to everyone as you would have to learn brand new units, every clock would have to get replaced, etc. However, a simple switch to a 24 hour clock would be much easier as we already have compatible clocks and it uses a system already in practice.

What is stopping you now? Go out and learn it! Start off by switching your computer's clock to a 24 hour format, you will learn it in no time.