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Mini-Stories: Volume 17

99% Invisible

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Revolutionizing Time: The Decimal Experiment

This chapter delves into the French Revolution's revolutionary timekeeping system, which aimed to decimalize time with a novel 10-hour day and a unique calendar. The discussion addresses the challenges of public adoption and the design of transitional clocks that showcased both the new and traditional time formats. It contrasts ambitious innovations with the practical difficulties faced, drawing parallels to modern timekeeping proposals like Swatch's Internet Time.

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