A decimal hour is a long film.
A working replica of the decimal clock decreed by France in 1793. Ten hours, one hundred minutes, one hundred seconds — to a day.
A decimal hour is a long film.
A decimal minute is a long red light.
A decimal second is a heartbeat.
| # | Standard | Decimal | Day % | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00 | 00:00:00 | 0:00:00 | 0.0% | Midnight |
| 01 | 02:24:00 | 1:00:00 | 10.0% | 1 decimal hour |
| 02 | 06:00:00 | 2:50:00 | 25.0% | Quarter day |
| 03 | 09:36:00 | 4:00:00 | 40.0% | 4 decimal hours |
| 04 | 12:00:00 | 5:00:00 | 50.0% | Noon — midi décimal |
| 05 | 14:24:00 | 6:00:00 | 60.0% | 6 decimal hours |
| 06 | 18:00:00 | 7:50:00 | 75.0% | Three-quarter day |
| 07 | 21:36:00 | 9:00:00 | 90.0% | 9 decimal hours |
| 08 | 24:00:00 | 10:00:00 | 100.0% | End of day |
A decimal clock divides the day into 10 hours instead of 24. Each hour holds 100 decimal minutes; each minute holds 100 decimal seconds. The day still lasts exactly 24 standard hours — it is only the counting that changes. One decimal hour is 2 hours 24 minutes of standard time. One decimal minute is 1 minute 26.4 seconds.
Yes. The French National Convention legislated decimal time on 5 October 1793. It became mandatory on 22 September 1794 and was officially suspended on 7 April 1795 — though the great clock on the Tuileries palace continued to display decimal time on its second face until at least 1801. Watchmakers produced dual-dial pieces during the transition.
Multiply the number of standard seconds since midnight by 100,000 / 86,400 ≈ 1.1574. Then split the result into decimal hours, minutes and seconds. Or just type a time into the converter above.
They are usually treated as synonyms in modern usage — a base-10 division of the day. "Decimal time" is the older, France-specific term; "metric time" is the more common contemporary phrasing among hobbyists who advocate it as a natural extension of the SI system.
Switching costs. Every clock, every printed schedule, every contract referenced standard time. Decimal time required retraining the entire population and re-tooling every workshop in France during a period of war. The Revolutionary calendar (with 10-day weeks) suffered the same fate and for the same reason: change is easy to legislate and hard to live.
timetoten is a working replica of the decimal clock decreed by the French Republic in 1793. The decree was repealed eighteen months later. The clock above the Tuileries kept running on its second dial until 1801. This page is the same clock, rebuilt in HTML — accurate to the standard second, recomputed in your browser, and committed to nothing else.