Swatch Internet Time (or beat time) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 and marketed by the Swatch corporation as an alternative, decimal measure of time. One of the goals was to simplify the way people in different time zones communicate about time, mostly by eliminating time zones altogether.
Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats". Each .beat lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Times are notated as a 3-digit number out of 1000 after midnight. So, @248 would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight representing 248/1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes.
There are no time zones in Internet Time; instead, the new time scale of Biel Mean Time (BMT) is used, based on Swatch's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland and equivalent to Central European Time, West Africa Time, and UTC+1. Unlike civil time in most European countries, Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time.
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History [link]
Swatch Internet Time was announced on October 23, 1998, in a ceremony at the Junior Summit '98, attended by Nicolas G. Hayek, President and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, President of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and then-director of the MIT Media Lab. During the Summit, Swatch Internet Time became the official time system for Nation1, an online country created and run by children.
Uses [link]
During 1999, Swatch produced several models of watch, branded "Swatch .beat", that displayed Swatch Internet Time as well as standard time, and even convinced a few websites (such as CNN.com) to use the new format. The clock applet in the GNOME desktop can be set to display time in this manner.[1] PHP's date() function has a format specifier 'B' which returns the Swatch Internet Time notation for a given time stamp. It is also used as a time reference on ICQ, and the online role-playing game Phantasy Star Online has used it since its launch on the Dreamcast in 2000 to try to facilitate cross-continent gaming (as the game allowed Japanese, American and European players to mingle on the same servers). In March 2001, Ericsson released the T20e, a mobile phone which gave the user the option of displaying Internet Time. Outside these areas, however, it appears to be infrequently used. While Swatch still offers the concept on its website, it no longer markets beat watches.
Beatnik satellite controversy [link]
In early 1999, Swatch began a marketing campaign based around the launch of their Beatnik satellite for a set of Internet Time watches. However, they were criticized for planning to use an amateur radio frequency for broadcasting a commercial message (an act banned by international treaties). Swatch reallocated the transmitter batteries to a different function on the MIR space station, thus the satellite never broadcast.[2]
Description [link]
Beats [link]
Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats". Each .beat lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Although Swatch does not specify units smaller than one .beat, third party implementations have extended the standard by adding "centibeats" or "sub-beats" as a decimal fraction, for extended precision: @248.00.[3][4]
Time zones [link]
There are no time zones; instead, the new time scale of Biel Mean Time (BMT) is used, based on the company's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland. Despite the name, BMT does not refer to mean solar time at the Biel meridian, but is equivalent to Central European Time and West Africa Time or UTC+1.
Like UTC, Swatch Internet Time is the same throughout the world. For example, when the time is 875 .beats, or @875, in New York, it is also @875 in Tokyo: 0.875 × 24 hours = 21:00 BMT = 20:00 UTC. Unlike civil time in most European countries, Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time and thus it matches Central European Time during (European) winter and Western European Summer Time, which is observed by the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal and the Canary Islands (Spain), during summer.
Notation [link]
The most distinctive aspect of Swatch Internet Time is its notation; as an example, "@248" would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight, equivalent to a fractional day of 0.248 CET, or 04:57:07.2 UTC. No explicit format was provided for dates, although the Swatch website formerly displayed the Gregorian calendar date in the order day-month-year, separated by periods and prefixed by the letter d (d31.01.99).
Time unit conversion [link]
| Unit | Beat Conversion |
|---|---|
| 1 day | 1000 .beats |
| 1 hour | 41.666 .beats |
| 1 min | 0.6944 .beats |
| 1 s | 0.01157 .beats |
See also [link]
- Decimal time
- French Republican Calendar
- ke = 10 'beats'
- Metric time
- New Earth Time
- Unix time
- Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
References [link]
- ^ "Gnome clock applet keys". Gnome clock applet keys. https://www.gnome.org/~bmsmith/gconf-docs/C/clock-applet.html.
- ^ "Hams jam space spam". BBC News. 1999-04-16. https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/320560.stm. Retrieved 2010-08-03.
- ^ "Nucleus Plugin: NP_InternetTime". TeRanEX Wiki. https://wiki.budts.be/internettime.
- ^ "iBeat". Archived from the original on 2007-10-08. https://web.archive.org/web/20071008131805/https://www.artefakt.com/projects/ibeat/index.html.
External links [link]
https://wn.com/Swatch_Internet_Time
Beat (1997 film)
Beat (Hangul: 비트; RR: Biteu) is 1997 South Korean gangster film directed by Kim Sung-su and written by Sam Shin about a high school dropout who is forced into gang life. Jung Woo-sung played the lead Min and Ko So-young his love interest Romy. The plot is based on a bestselling graphic novel by Huh Young-man.
The role solidified Jung as a leading Korean actor and was also based on his real-life experience as a high school dropout. This was the third and final film pairing Jung and Ko, but the director would later work with Jung again in Musa (2001).
Plot
Three friends in Korea all drop out of high school. Min is a feared brawler whose widowed mother is a drunk. The story traces his journey from high school to the underworld as his best friend introduces him to life in the mob. Complicating Min's life further is his love for the volatile Romy, a girl from an upper-class family with dreams of going to a prestigious college.
Cast
Beat (police)
In police terminology, a beat is the territory and time that a police officer patrols. Beat policing is based on traditional policing (late 19th century) and utilises the close relationship with the community members within the assigned beat to strengthen police effectiveness and encourage cooperative efforts to make a safer community. Beat police typically patrol on foot or bicycle which provides more interaction between police and community members.
Before the advent of personal radio communications, beats were organised in towns and cities to cover specific areas, usually shown on a map in the police station and given some sort of name or number. Officers reporting on duty would be allocated a beat by their sergeant and sometimes given a card indicating that the officer should be at a particular point at set times, usually half an hour, or forty-five minutes apart. The points would usually be telephone kiosks, police pillars or boxes, or perhaps public houses where it would be possible to phone the officer should he be needed to respond to an incident. The officer would remain at the point for five minutes and then patrol the area gradually making his way to the next point.
Master
Master, masters and the Master may refer to:
Ranks and titles
Master (naval)
The master, or sailing master, was a historic term for a naval officer trained in and responsible for the navigation of a sailing vessel. The rank can be equated to a professional seaman and specialist in navigation, rather than as a military commander.
In the British Royal Navy, the master was originally a warrant officer who ranked with, but after, the lieutenants. The rank became a commissioned officer rank and was renamed to navigating lieutenant in 1867; the rank gradually fell out of use from around c1890 since all lieutenants were required to pass the same exams.
When the United States Navy was formed in 1794, master was listed as one of the warrant officer ranks and ranked between midshipmen and lieutenants. The rank was also a commissioned officer rank from 1837 until it was replaced with the current rank of lieutenant, junior grade in 1883.
Royal Navy
In the Middle Ages, when 'warships' were typically merchant vessels hired by the crown, the man in charge of the ship and its mariners, as with all ships and indeed most endeavours ashore, was termed the Master; the company of embarked soldiers was commanded by their own Captain.
Master (form of address)
Master is an English honorific for boys and young men.
Origin of the term
Master was used in England for men of some rank, especially "free masters" of a trade guild and by any manual worker or servant employee addressing his employer (his master), but also generally by those lower in status to gentlemen, priests, or scholars. In the Elizabethan period, it was used between equals, especially to a group ("My masters"), mainly by urban artisans and tradespeople. It was later extended to all respectable men and was the forerunner of Mister.
After its replacement in common speech by Mister, Master was retained as a form of address only for boys who have not yet entered society. By the late 19th century, etiquette dictated that men be addressed as Mister, and boys as Master.
Current usage in UK
The use of Master as a prefixed title, was according to Leslie Dunkling "until recently ... a way of addressing politely a boy who was too young to be called "Mister"," When used in the UK, master is the honorific for boys under 18 years of age.
