Military Time

Sometimes the way we’re accustomed to doing things just doesn’t make sense.

Take the fact that Americans don’t use the Metric System, for example. As an American kid growing up in school, I was taught the Metric System and told by my teachers that all of us in the United States would soon be using it. This was fine with me - the Metric System instantly made much more sense than the strange & silly system of measurements we’d inherited from England.

But as we all know, the Metric System (sadly) never came into wide usage in the U.S.A.

Later on in life, I lived in Europe and discovered that Europeans use the 24 Hour Time System that Americans refer to as Military Time (sometimes it’s also referred to as Astronomical Time, too).

In countries outside of the U.S., the 24 Hour Time System is referred to as Railway Time (Europe) or Continental Time (England).

As a young person in the United States, my only exposure to Military Time was in movies that actually had to do with the military, usually when a group of commandos was planning a raid and had to synchronize their watches, or when fighter pilots were speaking to Ground Control.

The 24 Hour Time System just make sense - there is no denying it - because it makes it instantly and 100% clear what the exact time is.

The designations of AM or PM just seem so tacked on to our most commonly used 12 Hour Clock Time System. And they’re tacked on with good reason - because otherwise we wouldn’t know if we’re referring to a time in the day or night! So I ask you, what’s the point of having a timepiece, such as a normal analog clock, if that timepiece is incapable of specifying whether it’s the beginning or the end of the day?

Obviously, it’s pretty difficult to display the time using the 24 Hour Time System on an analog clock. Far better suited to this task is a digital clock. When using the 24 Hour Time System, most digital clocks will display times between 00:00 to 23:59, with 00:00 referring to 12 midnight (12 am). It is HIGHLY unusual for a digital clock to display midnight as 24:00, though there are a few of these in existence. If you ever find such an antique digital clock, which displays midnight as 24:00, I highly recommend that you purchase it immediately - it is surely a collector’s item and therefore somewhat valuable!

Did those of you living in the U.S.A. know that most of the world already uses the 24 Hour Time System ?

The last main remaining holdouts are the U.S.A., Canada and Australia.

But we in the U.S. shouldn’t switch to using Military Time simply because the rest of the world is using it.

We should switch to the 24 Hour Time System because it just make sense.

Technorati Tags: 12 Hour Clock, 12 Hour Clock System, 24 Hour Time, 24 Hour Time System, 24:00, Analog Clock, Astronomical Time, Digital Clock, Military Time, onlineclock, onlineclock.net

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