[LEAPSECS] Do lawyers care (know) about leap seconds?

[Kevin Birth]

The 12/24 clock was only "standard" in England and France.  Nuremberg
hours (separate counts for daytime and nighttime) lasted until 1811,
Italian hours (1-24 beginning at evening twilight) until the 1860s,
Japanese time until 1873.  I don't know when Bohemian hours were done away
with.  Some parts of France used canonical hours until the early 20th
century. There is also Chinese time, Hindu muhurtas, Jewish zmanim, and
the prayer times in Islam--all of which are different from the 12/24 hours
with 60 minutes.   

Standard times before the 19th century are an illusion created by only
focusing on the history of the representations that lasted into the
present and those representations became global because of empire and
colonialism.

Cheers,

Kevin




Kevin K. Birth, Professor
Department of Anthropology
Queens College, City University of New York
65-30 Kissena Boulevard
Flushing, NY 11367
telephone: 718/997-5518

"We may live longer but we may be subject to peculiar contagion and
spiritual torpor or illiteracies of the imagination" --Wilson Harris

"Tempus est mundi instabilis motus, rerumque labentium cursus." --Hrabanus
Maurus





On 10/1/14 12:13 PM, "Tony Finch" <dot at dotat.at> wrote:

>Kevin Birth <Kevin.Birth at qc.cuny.edu> wrote:
>
>> For most of human history there were no global time standards.  In
>>Europe,
>> many city states had their own distinctive times--Nuremberg Time,
>>Italian
>> Time, Bohemian Time . . .
>
>But before there were standard times there were standard representations
>of time, e.g. the 12/24 hour clock and base 60 fractions.
>
>Tony.
>-- 
>f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
>Trafalgar: Cyclonic in northwest, otherwise mainly northerly or
>northwesterly
>5 or 6. Slight or moderate. Showers in northwest. Good.
>_______________________________________________
>LEAPSECS mailing list
>LEAPSECS at leapsecond.com
>https://pairlist6.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs