Hexadecimal time

Nystrom's "Tonal Watch, or Clock-dial". Note the use of his invented digits for hex values 9-F. Also note that midnight (hour 0) is at the bottom, rather than the top of the clockface.
A hexadecimal clock-face

Hexadecimal time is the representation of the time of day as a hexadecimal number in the interval [0,1).

The day is divided into 1016 (1610) hexadecimal hours, each hour into 10016 (25610) hexadecimal minutes, and each minute into 1016 (1610) hexadecimal seconds.

History

Hexadecimal time may have been used during the Tang Dynasty (7th – 10th centuries) in China.

This time format was proposed by the Swedish-American engineer John W. Nystrom in 1863 as part of his tonal system.

In 1997, the American Mark Vincent Rogers of Intuitor proposed a similar system of hexadecimal time and implemented it in JavaScript as the Hexclock.

The system of Rogers

A day is unity, or 1, and any fraction thereof can be shown with digits to the right of the hexadecimal separator. So the day begins at midnight with .0000 and one hexadecimal second after midnight is .0001. Noon is .8000 (one half), one hexadecimal second before was .7FFF and one hexadecimal second before next midnight will be .FFFF.

Intuitor-hextime may also be formatted with an underscore separating hexadecimal hours, minutes and seconds. For example:

Clock

Hex Hex (Boardman) ISO 8601 Comment
.0100 0_10_0 00:05:37.5
.0200 0_20_0 00:11:15
.0400 0_40_0 00:22:30
.0800 0_80_0 00:45:00
.1000 1_00_0 01:30:00 1.5:24 = 1:16 = 0.1
.8000 8_00_0 12:00:00 12:24 = 8:16 = 0.8
.F000 F_00_0 22:30:00 22.5:24 = 15:16 = 0.F
.F800 F_80_0 23:15:00

Conversions

Hex hexsec
base 16
hexsec
base 10
Traditional
1 day = 10000 = 65536 = 24 h
1 hexadecimal hour = 1000 = 4096 = 1 h 30 min
1 hexadecimal maxime = 100 = 256 = 5 min 37.5 sec
1 hexadecimal minute = 10 = 16 = 21.09375 sec
1 hexadecimal second = 1 = 1 = 1.318359375 sec
1 second = 0.C22E4 = 0.75851 = 1 sec

See also

References

    External links

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