Napoleons' last orders to his troops at Waterloo:
Napoleon: Alright men, listen up, we will attack precisely
at 8 o'clock today.
Private #1: You mean we will attack tonight in the dark?
Napoleon: No, 8 o'clock tonight is actually tomorrow.
Private #2: But it is already past 8 o'clock today.
Napoleon: That's the old time, we are using Revolutionary
time now.
Private #3: Well my sundial says 8 o'clock today is 2 hours
before midnight.
Napoleon: Well that can't be right because then tomorrow
would be today and today would be yesterday and we can't
fight a battle yesterday. Maybe you are looking at your
sundial upside down.
Napoleon: Is everyone clear on the attack time now?
The troops look at one another with raised eyebrows.
Napoleon: Alright men, synchronize your sundials, may god be
with you.
brent
Frank King wrote:
Dear Andrew (and Fer),
Many thanks for this reference...
http://www.aandc.org/research/nautical_time_and_date.html
That is a splendid article and shows just what pitfalls
one can fall into when attempting to force historical
data to fit the present way of thinking!
I share your thought...
I can't really imagine that even sailors (or
astronomers) would have had the day changing
name at midday...
That said, I have a feeling that when Italian Hours
were in common use in Italy both the date and the
day name changed at sunset.
This is a cue for Italian readers of the list to
say that this has been widely discussed before
(which is true) and that no widespread agreement
has been established :-)
One hang-over which still persists in astronomy is
the Julian Day Number which changes at noon UTC.
As I write, it is Thursday and the JDN is 2455581.
In just over four hours time it will still be
Thursday but the JDN will be 2455582.
The scope for confusion is almost endless. This
splendid list has now provided us with pictures
of one French Revolution Hours sundial with noon
shown as 10 and another with noon shown as 5.
Maybe Napoleon didn't write a rigorous spec?
Frank
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