- Author
- Cyrille Médard de Chardon
- Published
- Undated, with code from about 2012
- Kind
- Personal project page, with working clocks
- Original
- serialc.github.io/altClocks/
- Subject
- Images made by rules
- Themes
- Rules that generate, Art through code
What it is
Cyrille Médard de Chardon's page shows working clocks based on different divisions of the day. They include 24-hour, decimal, binary, hexadecimal and 36-hour versions. The page asks whether a better time system could exist.
What it says
- The standard day of 24 hours, 60 minutes and 60 seconds seems arbitrary, it says.
- A decimal day has 10 hours, each with 100 minutes of 100 seconds.
- Decimal seconds last 86.4% of a classic second, and conversions become decimal shifts.
- A binary clock lacks accuracy, since each of its seconds lasts three hours.
- The 36-hour clock came from a reader's request, and the labels don't quite fit.
What evidence it gives
The evidence is the working clocks themselves. The page makes a preference argument and reports no tests of readability.
Interests and limits
This is a short personal exploration with an old codebase, which the author calls inflexible. Its claim that decimal time is easier to read is a personal judgment.
Connections
These links are this wiki's own reading, not claims the sources make.
- Music theory for programmers. Both ask why a cycle has the divisions it has. The day's are inherited, de Chardon says. Haas shows the octave's twelve are a compromise. A tuning is a clock for the octave.
- xenharmlib documentation. De Chardon redivides the day and shows what changes. xenharmlib does the same for the octave, with options such as 31 equal steps. Each lets you ask what a new division makes easier.