After some holidays I discover the debate about
"Swatch beat" and french revolutionnary hours.
The decimal hours, minutes and seconds were
introduced on the 24 november 1793 with the new
revolutionnary calendar. A contest followed on
the 9 february 1794 for the design and building
of corresponding clocks and watches. And indeed
some clocks were built accordingly. The Musée des
Arts et Métiers (CNAM) in Paris exhibits some of
them. But the experiment was "indefinitely"
postponed on the 7 april 1795, not because of
unpopularity but because of the cost of the
change of the wheeling of the existing clocks and
watches : by then all the wheels and gears were
cut and made by hand.
And so a few 'revolutionnary" sundials still
remains also. Adding to the ones quoted by
contributors of this list, I'll add a beautiful
sundial in a village of the Mayenne department :
it is carved on slate and shows the usual time
and the revolutionnary hours. By the way, the
1794 sundial quoted by F deVries is a new sundial
designed in 1989 for the second centenary of the
french Revolution, as another one in the
Hautes-Alpes.
J-P Cornec
Lannion
France
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> De : Andrew James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> A : '[EMAIL PROTECTED]';
'[email protected]'
> Objet : RE: New time??!!
> Date : lundi 26 octobre 1998 16:12
>
> Of course, one "Swatch Beat" is therefore also
equal to the second
> division in the French revolutionary or decimal
system of time
> measurement, which divided the day into 10
hours each of 100 minutes
> each of 100 seconds. I am afraid I forget the
actual terms for the
> units and the details of when it was
introduced, some time during the
> 1790's. It was dropped after a few years
because of its overwhelming
> unpopularity. :-)
>
> A few clocks remain; are there any such
sundials?
>
> Andrew James
>
> >>>
> > How long is a Swatch beat? In short we have
divided up the virtual and
> > real day into 1000 "beats".
> > One Swatch beat is the equivalent of 1 minute
26.4 seconds.
> >
> > <<<
> >
