Days, Hours, Minutes and Seconds

Day

A day, as a defined, invariant length of time, is the average period between Cal A - The Calmarendian Sun - reaching its highest point in the sky on two consecutive occasions.

The actual length of a Calmarendian solar day varies somewhat during the course of the planet's orbital cycle but the average over the whole cycle remains constant from one cycle to the next: see also Sunrise and Sunset.

Hour

Each day is divided into sixteen equal parts known as hours.

Minute

Each hour is divided into sixty-four equal parts known as minutes. There are 1,024 (2¹⁰) minutes in a day.

Second

Each minute is divided into sixty-four equal parts known as seconds. This gives us the base unit of time measurement: the Calmarendian second. There are 65,536 (2¹⁶) seconds in one day.

Smaller Time Divsions

From Earth History

The words "minute" and "second" derive from the Latin pars minuta prima (first small part) and pars minuta secunda (second small part) respectively with the first small part being one-sixtieth of the whole (hour) and the second small part being one-sixtieth of the first small part. Historically, on Earth, there have existed further subdivisions which might be generalized as the nth small part being one-sixtieth of the (n-1)th small part.

Calmarendian Equivalence

Might there exist, though perhaps not (or no longer) in common usage, a similar system of subdivision in Calmarendian time measurement? That is, the minute (the first small part of the hour) being 1/64th of the whole and, in general, the nth small part being 1/64th of the (n-1)th small part.

The table below sets out the equivalences of the second through seventh time division levels.

Calmarendian Reality

One can imagine there are good reasons (amongst them conceptualization and textual representation) why such a scheme of subdivisions never grained much traction on Earth and we might assume that, likewise, Calmarendians have settled on parts of seconds not being represented thus but by decimal fractions instead. However, as they probably do not possess the technology and, perhaps, do not have any need in everyday life to measure time to a resolution better than say tenths or, at best, hundredths of seconds, the "third small part" may not be so unwieldy to conceptualize, write down or talk about after all.

Reasoning behind the Time System

An Historical Perspcetive

The time system described here-above certainly predates the The Calendar of Lorelei and there are no historial records or artefacts known to exist which might suggest that Calmarendians have ever used any other. If the original settlers had brought with them clocks and watches calibrated to their old home on Earth, they would quickly have found them to be of little use on Calmarendi, just as Jennifer did many centuries later.

Clearly they would need a new time system but what to do? The most obvious solution, perhaps, would have been to adapt their existing system to their new environment for the Calmarendian day is not just close to twenty-five Earth hours long, it is exactly so. Thus it might have made sense for them to retain their existing units of seconds, minutes and hours - just with twenty-five hours to a day rather than twenty-four. Perhaps, for a while, they did just that but there is something inherently unsatisfactory in a system where you cannot get a whole number of hours from a simple division by two, particularly on a world where sunrise and sunset always divides the day into two equal halves.

There are two schools of thought about the reasons why Calmarendi adopted the powers of two'' time system:

1. Starting with a natural division by two (night and day) and then a further point of division by two (midday) it seemed entirely natural to just keep dividing by two ad-infinitum with just a nod to the major divisions with which everyone was already familiar.
2. The Horological Blueprint Book contained plans for timepieces calibrated to the powers of two'' division of the day and the Calmarendians decided to just roll with it.

A Logical Perspective: base-60 vs base-64

Despite what some may claim, there are no inherent advantages to using one particular base over another, it is simply what best suits the needs of those who use the system - though, let's be clear here, this can only ever be the case once everyone has agreed to use a common system. Adherents of the sexagesimal system point to the number of factors possessed by the number 60, namely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. But when you eliminate those factors that are powers of two and those that are, in effect, their inverse, what are you left with? 3, 5, 6, 10 and 20. Now, whilst there may be a case to be made for the convenience of this in angular measure (a case which, even there, collapses entirely when one, sensibly, sticks to radians for angular measure) the case is far less convincing for time measures. For example, when was the last time you heard anyone talk in terms of one third of an hour or one fifth of a minute? On the other hand, we regularly talk about half a minute or quarter of an hour; by extension it would seem logical to talk about one-eighth of an hour were it not for the fact that this is not, in the sexagesimal system, a whole number of minutes. (See also: Clocks and Telling the Time)

Beyond Unreality

Perhaps the best case for the base-64 time divisions - though not one that the Calmarendians are in any position to take advantage of nor one that we, as external observers, currently make use of - is that any time period which is a whole number of seconds long (or which uses the third and smaller base-64 subdivisions) always has, when expressed as days and fractions of a day, an exact binary representation.

Sub-divisions of the Day

1 day = 16 hours
1 hour = 64 minutes
1 minute = 64 seconds

Finer Sub-divisions (not in common use)

1 second = 64 thirds
1 third = 64 foruths
and so on...