Internet Time

The same time wordwide - no time zones, no daylight saving time.
Phone conference @800?

 Deutsch English
 

Services

 Print

The Idea

The idea for an Internet Time is attributed to Nicholas Negro­pon­te, the co-foun­der and long-ti­me lea­der of the MIT (Massa­chu­setts In­sti­tu­te of Tech­no­lo­gy) Media Laboratory(1).

SMH the manu­fac­tu­rers of the Swatch®(1) watch­es took it up and de­sig­ned a se­ries of watc­hes dis­play­ing the in­ter­net ti­me to­ge­ther with / in­stead of the lo­cal ti­me.

Since the Internet is glo­bal the In­ter­net Ti­me should be the sa­me glo­bal­ly:

  • no time zones,
  • no local de­vi­ations from ti­me zo­nes, and
  • no daylight sa­ving dif­fe­ren­ces.

People com­mu­ni­cating and co­ope­ra­ting over the in­ter­net don't ca­re about lo­cal ti­mes at dif­fe­rent pla­ces on earth. In­ter­net con­fe­ren­ce mem­bers are all awa­ke and at work. Peop­le mo­re and mo­re are per­ma­nent­ly in­ter­con­nec­ted. Mes­sa­ges are sent and re­cei­ved through­out the day. Dif­fe­rent time tags be­tween sen­ders and re­ci­pi­ents only could gi­ve ri­se to mis­un­der­stan­dings and ne­ver real­ly are use­ful.

Wouldn't it be ni­ce if con­fe­ren­ce part­ners in New York, in Bang­kok, To­kyo, Lon­don, and Ber­lin could agree upon their next "mee­ting @450".

The Time

According to its inventors the measure "time" should comply to international (metric) standards. Thus a day would be made up of 10 hours of 100 minutes instead of 2 day halfs of 12 hours, containing 60 minutes of 60 seconds each. In other words:

  • a day is divided into 1000 Beats (Swatch Beats).
  • Internet Time starts with @000 und ends with @999 (@1000 = @000).
  • One beat corresponds to 1 minute and 26.4 seconds or 86.4 seconds.

The Time Reference

The internet time reference is defined as midnight in Biel / Switzerland, where the Swatch / SMH group has its headquarters. Then everywhere on earth it's @000 internet time. At noon Biel local time all internet watches display @500. This reference time is also named "Biel Mean Time", (BMT) by the Swatch people.

Now it is...

Dieses Applet setzt einen JAVA-fähigen Browser voraus.
You need a Java-enabled browser to use this applet.
…wherever you are.

The applet

The Java app­let shown abo­ve may be down­loa­ded in com­pi­led and in sour­ce co­de form. If you abi­de to the sim­ple ru­les writ­ten in the "readme" fi­le that accom­pa­nies the app­let co­de you may use it for non-com­mer­cial as well as for com­mer­cial pur­po­ses. It has been writ­ten as an ex­ten­sion to a ticker app­let for which the sa­me ru­les ap­ply.

Also see

DownloadDown­load Page
DownloadApplet demo (german)

Notes

  • Swatch® is a re­giste­red tra­de­mark of SMH in Biel / Switzer­land.
  • Links marked (1) lead to ex­ter­nal pa­ges. Me­tho­di­ca has no rights re­gar­ding these pa­ges and does not in­flu­ence its con­tents. So, me­tho­dica does not ac­cept any lia­bi­li­ty for the­se pa­ges and pro­vi­des the links as a ser­vi­ce for the in­te­res­ted guest on­ly.