[dirktheman]

After the french revolution there was a short period (3 years) when the French had decimal time. It didn't catch on because that meant the workers had 10-day workweeks instead of 7.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

As a result, decimal clocks from that era are very rare and highly sought after!

[eloisant]

It has nothing to do with how one day is divided, it's the calendar.

[gourlaysama]

There was a proposition for a day of 10 hours, each having 100 minutes, each having 1000 seconds.

And later, with the calendar came a simpler version with 100 minutes in an hour, 100 seconds in a minute, and so on (Article XI of the "Décret de la Convention Nationale concernant l'Ere des Français" [1]). It was only official (and mandatory) for a few months, however [2].

Edit: the one with 1M seconds a day was only an earlier draft version that never made it into law.

[1]: http://www.gefrance.com/calrep/decrets.htm (in french)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time#France

[Aardwolf]

I wonder if that's an error, 10 hours, 100 minutes each, with each minute 1000 seconds would mean 1 million seconds a day. Further on the article says there are 100k such seconds a day though.

[gourlaysama]

You are completely right, I was confused by the first 1788 proposition. See edit.

Also, the weird thing was that, although they decided that an hour is divided in ten "parts", and each one of those in ten, and so one... they gave the name "minute" to the part of the part of the hour (so that 1 hour == 100 minutes), and the same for the second vs the minute.

I wonder how people managed to get a hang of this mess...

[dirktheman]

It has, the french went full on with the decimal system back then. And they didn't stop at the date and time, they also did away with all other measurements for size, weight and distance, but also things like the feudal system. Must have been confusing times!

[Two9A]

"Decimal date and time" is probably the more proper phraseology. But that'd just be pedantry, of course.