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.
Our country is so big and heavily populated (and most of our many, many populated areas are overshadowed by a few really touristy places like New York, the Disney parks and Yellowstone National Park and Hawaii which isn’t even that American) and that you’ll rarely encounter someone from a country that uses the 24 hour system. Canada uses the 12-hour clock if I remember correctly from when I last went there, and I think Mexico does since we usually learn their dialect of Spanish in school (but I’m not sure, in all my spanish classes they taught us to say “son las ocho y media en la noche” for 8:30 PM, instead of “veinte y media horas” as I was taught when I studied in Spain for a semester)
Nobody says “veinte y media”. It’s “veinte treinta”, and everyone understands that and it’s shorter than “ocho y media de la noche”, which everyone understands as well. They’re completely interchangeable and nobody would find either strange or unusual.
Most countries that use 24h time (Western Europe, ime) use both interchangeably - saying “at 18” or “at six in the evening” are both totally normal.
Just to add to this. I found a map on Wikipedia that shows this.
That map looks quite inaccurate, I wonder where they got that info.
Brazil is just as big and populated, with as much regional variety, and we don’t struggle with 24hrs time nor do we call it military time.
It may be rare to find someone who uses it in regular conversation, but medical, logistics, IT, and military commonly used it… Everyone likely knows a few people that use it.
Quebec uses 24h, rest of Canada uses 12h.
Quebec does a lot of dumb shit that isn’t consistent with the rest of Canada
Hard to consider using 24hr time amongst the ‘dumb shit’ though.
Agreed. I use 24 hour time on all my devices, working in IT it just makes things easier.
Shocking that a distinct society, a separate nation within Canada, has different customs…
Given how they use different systems to measure almost everything than the rest of the world, I’d say I’m OK with them not using the 24h format, I’d expect them to use something like the 27 American hours, divided in 109 minutes of 31 seconds each.
You mean freedom minutes, right??
Sorry, you’re right. And stars and stripes minutes
The freedom clock, where hours are called “freedoms”, minutes are called “stars” and seconds are called “stripes”.
Stop giving them ideas!
HOOAH
Ljbol
Agreed
You mean the 50 hour freedom clock? One hour for each state, yee-haw!
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Hardcore name
I was worried for all the geners.
24h
The average American is likely to have more interaction with American service men and women than Europeans. Most Latin immigrants I know use the 12 hour clock. While the 24 hour clock is preferred in many countries, they are not the countries that immigrate to the US in large enough numbers to influence us or expose us to the 24 hour clock like our own military does.
IMHO, I don’t think that would change anything (with regards to immigrant influence).
EDIT For those downvoting me, I’ll explain it more for you. The vast majority of the world currently uses the metric system. Only three countries officially use the imperial system (UK has mixed usage, including them would bring the number to four.). If the majority of the world uses one system, and the US hasn’t changed, how will migrants influence the country enough to change?
Wait, how would you know whether migrants use the 24 hour clock?
You’re not supposed to say “we meet at fifteen thirty”, you just say half past three or, in non-English languages sometimes “three in the afternoon”.
You only write it as 24 hours because it saves you having to add extra letters to solve the ambiguity. When I interact with Americans I also write “three PM”, it’s just being polite.
You’re not supposed to say “we meet at fifteen thirty”, you just say half past three or, in non-English languages sometimes “three in the afternoon”.
Uh, why not? Absolutely you can say “half past 15 hours”, and plenty of places do.
Never seen that spoken myself. Do yo have any examples? I’m genuinely curious
I have all my clocks and watches set to 24h like a normal person and I’ve never heard a human being say that out loud or said it myself.
Outside of American movies featuring the military, I suppose, which answers the OP’s question.
In the US, the 12-hour clock format is in widespread use, except in the military. That is why it’s called like that.
It’s interesting that it’s not as widespread amongst the public.As far as I know, the rest of the world either uses it or is able to understand it whereas I’ve had the opposite with Americans. I’m a very limited sample size though.
As far as I know the Japanese use it aswell. I learned 午後 and 午前 as vocab at least. (Am and pm)
It’s standard in Canada as well. I prefer 24hr personally. There were a couple times where I’ve napped in the evening, and woke up thinking I was late for work in the morning. Not fun. 24hr clock solves that. Plus it just makes more sense to me than 12hr clocks.
I have no strong opinion but I’ll give some reasons that people don’t often consider.
Analog clocks are often easier to understand visually for people. A typical person will be awake for 16ish hours of the day. Which means that when looking at an analog 12 hour clock, you can easily see where you’re at in your day. That is both harder to do on an analog 24 hour clock and it also doesn’t make sense because you won’t really ever see 1/3rd of the clock get used. Military is forced to use it because the time is all digits which makes confusion less possible and displaying it easier.
When talking about the digital version, again, it reflects how humans experience time easier. Again consider using a clock in which you will not typically see or use a third of the numbers for anything. Why do that?
I think a lot of what bugs us about these two systems is the zero points. If I could redo it, I’d put 12am to line up and make 6am noon. Then 6pm is now evening/night.
I suggest that because the current 12hr systems are set up to benefit capitalism. It’s meant to make you forget how long you’re working in the US. And telling people that waking up at 5am to do stuff is morning is also stupid. It’s still night time at that time and our clocks don’t reflect that at all.
I’ve never even seen a digital clock that’s not 24h. I actually can’t see at all why it would be easier to see where you’re at in the day with the 12h AM/PM lol. Definitely an American thing.
I mean it’s a minor difference and you get used to both systems, but like I said, by cutting the scale in half from 24 to 12 you’re magnifying the difference in time. For instance, 3 to 6pm on 12 hour clocks is 25% of the scale whereas it’s actually 12.5% of the overall day on 24hr scale. But you don’t experience the overall day, you sleep for a big chunk of it. In other words, the 12hr clock is more appropriately representing that time to you as a portion of your waking day.
Consider this: if I told you the time in an accurate but larger quantity, how would it look to you? Like if I told you that my clock is 48 hours and resets every two days to go from 0 to 48, wouldn’t it change your perception of time? It creates dissonance that a 3 hour meeting would feel very long and yet it is such a small portion of your two day clock. That’s kind of how Americans feel about 24hr clocks.
You think you are magnifying things, but you aren’t.
The minute hand on an analogue clock goes equally as fast whether you use 24 hour or 12 hours.
In fact you are even losing accuracy, because if someone tells you to be there at 6 o clock, you have 2 possible times. Whereas with 24, there is only one possibility.
That is why you need to specify with AM and PM.
And in a digital clock it matters even less.
Now explain to me like I am 5, why does a 12 hour clock go from 11 PM to 12 AM to 1 AM?
Why is that 12th hour considered the start of the 12 hour cycle, instead of the end?
I guess I’ve become the 12hr clock simp here (I’m not tho, use whatever) so here I go.
Forget the minute hand. If I have a 24hr clock, the hours will be more crowded. Meaning that the per-hour angle of each number is halved. I’d imagine this somewhat limits clock design or runs the danger of being harder to tell which hour you’re actually on with a short hour hand. The numbers must be smaller and the hour hand must be longer for the same accuracy.
And yes you are losing technical accuracy with a 12hr clock. But a few things about this. Again it’s more about that humans actually experience time in smaller segments than 24 hours. You don’t experience a full 24hr day. You usually experience a smaller segment like 12-16 hours. This is especially true if you divide your time into day/night or work/leisure.
Now the obvious downside like you mentioned is the am/pm thing. However, that usually isn’t a problem and I don’t get how people would reference 24hr clocks in conversation. Do they say “yeah sure, we can grab drinks at eighteen hundred” or “eighteenth hour” or do they just say eighteen? (American problems).
It’s usually not a problem because context goes a very long way. If I ask you to grab lunch at 2, obviously it’s 2pm. If I ask to grab drinks at 8:30, it’s pm. Most social events come with a time context and most social events are in the afternoon. There’s surprisingly little overlap between events that would be early morning/late evening.
And yes I know digital clocks the formats matter less. It’s a preference thing, no one should care much.
As for the reason for 12 being the changeover time, it’s all for analog clocks. Looking at an analog clock, when determining the hour you draw a line out from the hour hand. Whatever is the nearest number counter-clockwise, that’s what hour it is. So the 12th hour exists. Otherwise you’d have it go from 11:59 to 0. And zero o’clock makes no sense, especially at noon. Again, no clue how anyone would reference this in 24hr. Half passed midnight maybe? But again if you can say pick me up from the party at 12:30am, you don’t have to reference midnight but people still do sometimes.
As for 12am vs pm, it’s simply because the clock transitions at its apex. If it didn’t, it’d be confusing. Also 11:59 is midnight in either system, so it’s the middle of the night. And it creates an obvious transition for midday to exist.
I hope that clears up why the system exists and why I personally prefer it. Again, use whatever works, but I promise the system works pretty well for everyone that uses it. The more disruptive thing is daylight savings time, not the system itself.
It’s veeeeery not standard in Canada. I use it on my phone and most people who see it on the lockscreen treat me like I’m an alien, and it’s about a 50/50 mix of people who simply think 24 hour time is weird (but at least recognize it) vs. people who seem genuinely baffled by the digits they see appearing on my phone and don’t even seem to recognize it as a time at all.
It’s definitely not standard in Canada. I wish it was. Every time I buy something, I have to figure out how to swap it to 24h mode.
Sorry, I meant 12hr is standard (agreeing with Nemo’s original comment).
I live in the US and I’ve never met someone who isn’t able to understand it. They might need to convert it in their heads to compare it with other times.
There is a cultural phenomenon called schismogenesis - the tendency for one culture to define itself by how it differs from other cultures around it. Even in cases where the culture Y approach is “better” by whatever metric, culture X people will reject it because it’s a Y thing and not an X thing. I see the US rejection of the metric system under Reagan being the most glaringly obvious example of this, but the time thing is probably part of it, too.
I just really wish we hadn’t gone with the whole base 60 system in the first place.
I think I once read that when the metric system was first defined during the French Revolution, they also tried to use a decimal system for time, but that was quickly abandoned.
I kind of wish we had gone all the way with base 60
Base 60 is so handy though. Very divisible.
Why the hate for base 60? It has its roots in Babylon and also forms the basis for angles in geometry.
I am not a baseist. Some of my favorite algorithms are base-2.
We don’t use it in Canada, expect military or hospital records.
Quebec would like to have a word with you.
Then again they also have some opinions on that whole ‘Canada’ thing too.
We don’t use it in Canada, except military or hospital records.
Americans understand it just fine.
Just like I understand what a meter is, but in real life, I would NEVER use the meter as a unit of measurement.
Yeah, I know metric is the better system, I agree. This isn’t about that. It’s about saying something and not making the listener take a moment to convert it into how they relate to the world.
Americans do not understand it just fine. I’ve had my phone on 24h time for years and the amount of fellow Americans who are completely baffled by it baffles me.
I’d say that’s probably more because they are morons and not because they are American.
I mean, can be both
Look up the “theory of American exceptionalism”. In short there is a very strong belief here that America is one of a kind and things that may work for others simply don’t apply here.
Explains why the US stocks a 12hr clock, messed up month/day/year mission, imperial measurement and a ton of other things that any foreigner will find anywhere from quirky to infuriating.
IMHO the exceptionalism theory is a b.s. lazy way of keeping things conservative and unchanged and shutting down any discussion of uncomfortable progress.
US and international date standards all suck : ISO8601 on the other hand is beautiful
“American Exceptionalism” also known as “Europeans are obsessed with America and can’t understand why American’s don’t follow their orders, meanwhile the Danes count like Barbarians and the UK hasn’t picked a system”
I could give a shit about following orders, it’s a lot easier dealing with international business/trade/politics.
If everyone is on the same page, things are easier. I like the metric system. I’m a mechanic and my life is often hell because of the differences.
Ah yes, the two halves of the world, America and Europe.
On the english-speaking internet? Pretty much, plus the Aussies and Canadians.
You can make a “I hate you so much” “I don’t think about you at all” meme out of it if you want, but the fact is that American media, most notably Hollywood has an immense cultural impact in the western world. People are often confronted with the weird system that Americans use, but not the other way round, let alone come across something like the danish numbering system. It’s less obsession and more unpleasant regular occurances that lead to such strong opinions about the American system.
Well then make your own movies and shows then. Im not really seeing the problem.
We are, and plenty of em.
They just aren’t in English.
So if we look for English content, we encounter fantasy metrics where you guys measure in the feet of a long dead king, and the idiotic AM/PM system that goes from 11 AM to 12 PM and then to 1 PM.
Also, plenty of countries use both 12 hour and 24 hour time. Its not hard.
Why are you so obsessed with what Americans use for measurements? They aren’t forcing or even asking you to use it
Ok, then why blame us? “Oh no. Someone put up a sign for burgers and when I went inside, they had burgers! Im going to blame them!”
There was a theory I read at one point, that for the life of me I can’t remember the name of, that basically described a generalized form of exceptionalism, but for different categories.
Basically, the “most something” countries in any particular category are going to have exceptional circumstances that make what other countries do not always apply.
India, having the largest population, faces demographic problems that solutions that work in the Netherlands just can’t address.
Same with Russian transportation infrastructure, and ultimately American economic issues.Thank you for sharing that! I’ll have a look into it.
It’s not even imperial measurements - the US has its own customary units.
You’d think 24 hour watches would be more common than they are especially among European watches.
My kid had the hardest time reading a 12 hour clock. I think am/pm is too abstract for young kids. 24 hour makes more intuitive sense. The number resets only at the end of the day.
Adding on to that most civilians are only exposed to 24 hr time in a field that was either organizationally based off of the military such as police or emergency medicine or in fields where it’s important to have precise time keeping like hospitals
as an american i must say i HATE this as well. people ask me why i use military time and i say it’s because there are 24 hours in the day so it makes much more sense to me. and that in other parts of the world they call it international time with the military having nothing to do with it.
makes me wanna scream. thank you for letting me go off.
Not sure if you’ve had the same experience but I had an American colleague ask me what I meant when I didn’t give the time in the 12hr format. The message was something like, “I’ve booked the meeting for 14:00”
I’m American but work on transportation where 24hr clock is…sort of the standard.
I prefer 24hr and use it on all my devices, but outside work I pretty much exclusively communicate with 12 hr. No point in using wording I know is gonna be misunderstood when I can comfortably swap between the two.
Similar things happen to me. All of my devices are in Spanish in addition to 24hr, so anything automated is sent in Spanish to my non speaking colleagues
Knowing Americans they would’ve rejected it if it wasn’t called military time. In fact I reckon if you guys rebranded metric system to military measurements there might be more acceptance to it.
You tried…
I keep telling people metric time is where it’s at but they just look at me like I’m crazy
obviously we should all just switch to metric time lmao
Time is not metric
Just to be devil’s advocate:
Time is not really not metric, either, to be absolutely fair. The 60/60/24 thing is mostly just a continuation of the sexagesimal system used by the Babylonians.
There are also plenty of instances in history where civilizations used a decimal system of timekeeping. Just a summary of the Wikipedia page on the matter below:
- Egypt: used in astronomy, the decade, equal to 10 days, with 36 decades per solar year, with an added 5 intercalary days at the end.
- China: the shi and ke, equal to 1/10 of a solar day & 1/100 solar day, respectively, though this has gone in and out of favor with and without modifications due to China having a long-ass (and thus varied) history.
- Revolutionary France: 10 days per week, 10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute. (Although, to be fair, most common people ignored it and just used the sexagesimal time base they had always been used to. Lol.)
Alternatively, if you make the decimal second equal to 0.8640… SI seconds, then that would allow you to have 100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes per hour, 10 hours per day, and still have clocks align with the solar day.
Hell, even our definition of the second is merely the number of “pulses” (word used for brevity’s sake) of the Cesium-133 atom that corresponds to how long our second is. In other words, our definition of the second isn’t based on objective truth; we just found an objective way to define the system we already use. Lol.
Mind you, I’m merely playing devil’s advocate here. As much as I love the SI, and the metric system in general (both modern and previous versions), and would not be opposed to switching to decimal time if mandated, I’m okay with the system we have now. I JUST FUCKING WISH WE ALL USED 24H FORMAT GODDAMMIT THE AMBIGUITY OF 12H TIME PISSES ME OFF JUST FUCKING WHY GODDAMN IT nearby explosive barrel explodes from proximity to blood vessels
tl’dr: Our conception of time as sexagesimal, and even based on the Cs-133 atom, is not quite as objectively based as one might be led to think. Also, fuck 12h time.
Edit: There are 36 “decades” per solar year, not 3. Lol.
I remember hearing an anecdote that (I forget which band) got signed because they misunderstood the record producer when they requested a demo at 8 and showed up ready to play psychedelic rock at 8oclock in the fuckin morning
Good comment. Thanks!
Isn’t the second defined by light traveling a specific distance in vacuum?
To add to that, I wish we all just used UTC. Time zones are useless, we could all just adjust to the universal time in local schedules.
Also: english could be renamed to common and it would make sense.
Isn’t the second defined by light traveling a specific distance in vacuum?
If we were to redefine the second as 0.864 SI seconds, then the new second would be defined as the time it takes light to travel 0.864x the current meter. Of course since the modern definition of the meter is defined as a light-second, changing the definition of the second would also change the definition of a meter. (One thread loose pulls another thread loose and all that jazz…) My point being that these are merely objective ways to define the units we already use, not objective proofs of said units.
To add to that, I wish we all just used UTC. Time zones are useless, we could all just adjust to the universal time in local schedules.
Although that would be absolutely fantastic in my opinion, there are uses to time zones. Most people’s sleep cycles are naturally calibrated to light levels, which vary from time zone to time zone. Originally, time zones were split into equal divisions of latitude across the globe 15° apart, for this exact reason, it being the most logical way to divide them by.
What I just want is nations to stop fucking this up by using nationality and cultural reasons to have vastly separate areas abide by the same time zones. I mean, for fuck’s sake, here is what they used to look like; here is what they are now. Good gods is that a complete clusterfuck… I mean, seriously, China used to be four time zones; now they’re one!
If we just used UTC people on Europe could sleep from 23:00 to 7:00, people from Japan could sleep from 15:00 to 22:00 and so on. There would be no need to “localize” time.
I suppose.
Pshh I bet you use acoustic time.
What?
changing the value of a second is not really feasible nowadays, so instead i would propose to just remove minutes and hours, and use seconds, hectoseconds and kiloseconds
Here in California, I’ve heard both “military time” and “24 hour time” used interchangeably for writing the time as “03:45” or “16:20”. That said, I’ve heard – citation needed – that proper military time does not use the colon, such as “1600”, pronounced as “sixteen hundred hours”.
As for why the public might refer to this generally as “military time”, it may just be that that’s the most common, well-known use-case in the States, outside of the sciences. I personally use 24 hour time on all my devices, but I’ve come across many people who prefer clockfaces or AM/PM, probably out of habit.
I’ve heard the same with regards to proper military time not having the colon.
In Switzerland it works like that too.
“Normal time” for us is 24h with colon so 18:00
While “Military time” is without colon, so 1800 and is then pronounced as achtzehnhundert (eighteen hundred).
We don’t use colons in our time in the American hospital system. We use them for a lot of other things though. (Pun)
It took me a second to realise what the pun was…
By the book, you’re right. No colon when written, and if the last two digits aren’t “00” they are supposed to be pronounced individually.
4:45pm = 1645 = “Sixteen Four Five hours”. (Or “Fooor fife” if you’re a pedant about radios.)
That’s all well and good trivia, in practice it’s usually said “Sixteen forty five” because yeah ain’t nobody got time for all that.
As a fairly-new ham radio operator, I need to improve my numbers pronunciation so maybe I’ll start reading the time like that and see how other people react.
Already, I get a number of confused-then-resigned looks when saying “sixteen o’clock” haha
Oh wow. That explains a lot. I always thought that when Americans said “military time”, they meant Zulu time, that is 24h time UTC.
TIL it’s just sparkling 24h local time.
Glad I’m not the only one. I also thought “military” was always UTC and “24” was local time.
Americans are stupid when it comes to converting 24hrs “Militery time” to 1 pm, 2 pm, ext. making them all confused.
Ignorance is not stupidity.
My company used to always use 24hr time when we were using a DOS based system. Then we upgraded to Windows Server 2009 and everything changed to 12hr. I preferred the 24hr. There were less mistakes.
*fewer
*Smellfungus
Different places have different cultures and traditions. In the US, 12hr time is standard. 24hr time is used mostly by the military.
There are certainly arguments for why 24hr time is a better system. That doesn’t make it stupid to continue to use a slightly inferior system. Most cultures don’t try to adapt best practices from around the world.
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Military time chart is common because there is less confusion on what time something starts or ends. Why is just because people that use it are usually connected to the military in some way.
It is literally a foreign concept to the vast majority of them (only other countries use it widely in everyday life) and the military is one of the very few contexts in which they will experience it.
Note Zulu Time (mission time) is equal to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) everywhere in the world.
GMT observes daylight savings as it is in Greenwich England, this is not consistent between countries. UTC does not observe daylight savings.
Er, not sure if I understand you but In Greenwich we use GMT in winter and BST in summer so GMT doesn’t change.
Different countries that observe DTS pick different days to do the switches. Also the closer to the equator you wre the higher likelyhood they dont observe it at all.
The point is that GMT isn’t changing, the region is switching to an entirely different time zone, BST (British Summer Time). If your time is based on GMT, it won’t change due to British daylight saving time because GMT never changes.
For a similar example, in the part of the US that uses Mountain Time, states observe MST (Mountain Standard Time) in the winter, and most switch to MDT (Mountain Daylight Time) in the summer. However, Arizona doesn’t observe daylight saving time, so they remain on MST. MST always stays the same (GMT-7), the time is only changing because the states are observing a different time zone. The same happens with GMT and BST, it’s just harder to see because you can’t pick out areas that remain on GMT all year.
But in Europe we don’t say German Mean Time or Spanish Mean Time when changing to summer time. We increment GMT+1. So it becomes GMT+2. Then we revert back to GMT+1 in winter.
Incorrect - GMT is a timezone which the UK (and some other countries) observe in winter. In summer, the UK observes BST.
Good explanation here: https://www.timeanddate.com/time/gmt-utc-time.html
Thank you for the correction and the reference. The only time I can think of where these sort of distinction would come into play anyway would be if you asked a person in London the time from somewhere else vs. looking it up on a website. I dont exactly have any UK friends I call to look at clocks for me.
All time should work this way. 24 hr time running on GMT.
If someone in Cali wakes up at 1600, the only thing they change is their clocks and calendars, once.
We do all base our time off GMT +/- whatever your timezone is.
It’s just another term for it. 🤷♂️
Because the average American is much more likely to bump into American military personnel than people from countries that use 24 hour time. It’s really as simple as that.
And this isn’t because we’re uncultured swine, it’s because we’re separated by two oceans from most countries.
The entire US logistics chain runs on 24 hour time, even the 100% domestic aspects.
The logistics chain would also save tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue every year if we ended daylight savings time and time zones, and collectively is one of the biggest lobbies for those changes
I would love to know why if you have more info to share
Logistics uses 24 hr clocks to be as precise as possible
The reasoning for lost revenue is a long story, but to heavily TLDR it, the entire logistics chain is basically a giant house of cards, and every mistake compounds repeatedly. Everything from a scheduling error at one warehouse to a driver not knowing about weird time zones (like AZ), to international miscommunications, all pile up on both their own individual load/order and every other step in the chain. A mistake at one manufacturer rolls to the next manufacturer, which then snowballs to the receiver, influencing timing on the last mile delivery.
Because of the heavily interconnected nature, any mistake in documentation, ordering, or timing causes significant delays and missed revenue elsewhere.
Thank you! That makes sense, i appreciate your time and thoroughness of your response!
The entirety of South America uses 24hr time.
Which is a few countries south of the US and connected to NA by a nearly impassible forest and no roads… Might as well be another ocean.
lol
Australia has entered the chat
Australia isn’t real.
Paradise, Heaven, Eden, Australia, whatever it is.
It’s a penal colony…
not mutually exclusive
