Alternate measures of time [ was: RE: Hong Kong handover honored

Joe Barrera (joebar@MICROSOFT.com)
Tue, 1 Jul 1997 17:31:06 -0700


> From: Seth Golub [SMTP:seth@cs.wustl.edu]
> While I don't expect us to ever switch to a decent measurement of
time*
> * http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~seth/projects/chrons/

Chrons? Hmm. I personally prefer the VMS-inspired idea of basing time on
fortnights:

FN (fortnight): 14 days (by definition)
mFN (millifortnight): ~20 minutes
uFN (microfortnight): ~1.2 seconds

An hour is ~3 mFN, a day is ~70 mFN, a week is 1/2 FN, a month ~ 2 FN, a
year ~26 FN.

It's actually handy to remember these numbers even if you don't use
fortnights as an "external representation" of time.

E.g.:

How many hours in a year? An hour is ~3 mFN, a year is ~26 FN, so it's
about 1000*(26/3) or about 8700 hours (really 8760).

How many seconds in a year? A second is 1.2 uFN, so a year is about
10^6*(26/1.2) or 10^6*(6*26/5) or 10^6*(156/5) or 31.2 million seconds
(really 31.536 million).

- Joe

Joseph S. Barrera III (joebar@microsoft.com)
http://research.microsoft.com/~joebar
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