Why is it that Americans refer to 24 hour time as military time? I understand that the military uses the 24hr format but I don’t understand why the general public would refer to it like that?

It makes it seem like it’s a foreign concept where as in a lot of countries it’s the norm.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    For the people where 24h time is normal …. Is that a more recent development it’s the ubiquity of digital clocks, or would people have also used 24h time with analog clocks, despite them not having a way to display that?

    —- looking around, realizing I still hav analog clocks all over because I wanted my kids to be familiar with them. That boat sailed

        • CorneliusTalmadge@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There are watches that have an actual 24hr face as you describe the normal 6 position is 12 and 12 becomes 24. Which I think are fairly uncommon, I don’t recall ever seeing one in person.

          More common to just see analog watches with dual time markings say a 24 under the 12.

          An image search along the lines of “24hr watch face” will show some examples.

          • theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            Yes they are pretty uncommon, all the ones I have owned were old Russian ones that could be pretty unreliable and watch makers never wanted to touch them in terms of repairing them, hence why I have had a few. I believe the ones I had were made by ‘Raketa’

          • njordomir@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            As someone who really needs to visualize my day, I love phone and watch apps that use a 24h watch face. It’s very logical to display sunrise/sunset times and I even found an app that displays my calendar events as time slices in my clock pie.

            Always wanted to pick up a cool analog 24h watch too.

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      we have analog clocks because my wife has forbidden us from living in a minimalist glass and chrome cube where the only decoration is neon lighting and we only wear latex body suits and sunglasses indoors 😿

    • Meowing Thing@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In Brazil it has just always been this way. We have normal 12h clock faces and we are used to both 24h and 12h time. The curious thing is that we are used to read and write in 24h, but in speaking the vast majority uses 12h. Probably because it’s shorter to say “nove e meia” than “vinte e uma e trinta” for 09:30/21:30