Time for a Change: A 10-Hour Day

Background: Once every four years, February bestows upon us an extra day. Revenge for us making it the shortest month, perhaps. Leap Day is the calendar's way of keeping itself honest, compensating for Earth's impolite refusal to orbit the sun in a neat 365-day cycle. This quadrennial curiosity has been a part of the Gregorian calendar since 1582, ensuring that our seasons don't drift into a climatic remix nobody asked for.

For you, today is probably just another Thursday. For humanity, it's a testament to our relentless pursuit to organize, understand, and control the flow of time.

Speaking of understanding time, let's take a minute to marvel at a failed attempt to organize time on a grander scale. While humans seemed to have accepted the one extra day every four year arrangement, they didn't accept Decimal Time.

Deja Vu: In the fervor of revolution and the quest for rationality, France once embarked on a bold endeavor to redefine the fabric of time. The French Revolutionary Calendar, introduced in 1793, not only replaced the Gregorian calendar but also sought to decimalize time. The plan?

• 10 hours a day

• 100 minutes in each hour

• 100 seconds in each minute.

This was a radical departure from the 24-hour day, aimed at reflecting the new revolutionary values by eliminating old vestiges and creating a system that was logical and egalitarian. However, like a middle-of-the-week Monday this was ahead of its time and utterly out of sync with society's rhythms.

Despite its logical foundation, Decimal Time faced practical challenges and resistance from the public. By 1795, this experiment in timekeeping was largely abandoned, a fascinating footnote in the history of how we measure our days. 

Numbers: It’s worth breaking down Decimal Time a little more to see what the plan was.

• The Revolutionary Calendar featured 12 months of 30 days each

• Months were divided into 3 10-day weeks called décades.

• The aim here was to eradicate religious and royalist influences, including the seven-day week with its Sabbath rest.

• Sansculottides: 5 extra days added at the end for holidays.

• Every 4 years (hey…that sounds familiar) a 6th sansculottide was added to the end of the year to reconcile with the sidereal year.

Fact: Leap Day is an “extra” day on the calendar, but there was once a removal of days.

The Gregorian Calendar had 10 days disappear from existence to make the calendar work. In October 1582, to transition from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, People went to bed on October 4th and woke up on October 15th.

Time travel is possible—with the right paperwork.

Definition: Interpolation

In the context of timekeeping, it's the insertion of an extra day, month, or year into a calendar to keep it synchronized with the seasons.

Profile: Philippe Fabre d'Églantine, (1750-1794)

Before his involvement in the political turmoil of the French Revolution, Fabre d'Églantine achieved modest success as a playwright and actor. As the Revolution gained momentum, Fabre d'Églantine became a member of the Jacobin Club, aligning himself with the more radical elements of the Revolution.

He is perhaps best remembered for his role in creating the French Revolutionary Calendar. He was instrumental in designing the new calendar system, which sought to remove royalist and religious influences. Fabre d'Églantine himself proposed the names of the months, which were inspired by nature, such as Brumaire (from "brume," meaning mist) and Thermidor (from "thermos," meaning heat).

(Not that new names for months would make it any easier to understand that Noon was now at 5 o’clock).

List: I Just Need A Little More Time

• The Snooze Button: Just once.

• Additional Time: 2, 6, maybe 10 minutes, who really knows. The extra time added to a soccer match to make up for stoppages is at the referee’s discretion.

• Grace Period: Some financial agreements allow extra time beyond the due date for payments without incurring late fees or penalties. How nice.

• Gap Year: Periods taken off from work or between stages of education, offering individuals time to pursue personal interests, travel, study, rest, etc.

• (10 minutes later) The Snooze Button, again.

Recommended Reading: Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year 

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