Around the town of Folkestone, ten clocks have been created or altered to show decimal time. Decimal time has ten fours to a day, a hundred minutes to the hour and a hundred seconds to the minute. The idea came about when, on 5 October 1793 the recently formed Republic of France abandoned the Gregorian calendar in favour of an entirely new model, the French Republican Calendar, which became the official calendar of France for 13 years.
The clock has a round face with hours 1 to 10 marked in black Arabic numerals. Ten is at the traditional 12 position and five at the traditional 6. One hundred minutes are marked around the outer edge with ten minutes being between each hour. The hands are painted black. The reverse side of the clock has the same style but with twelve hours.
Beneath one of the seats, near the clock, is a plaque that reads:
"Ruth Ewan
'We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be', 2011
10-part installation of clocks in various locations
On 5th October 1793 the recently formed Republic of France abandoned the Gregorian calendar in favour of an entirely new model, the French Republican Calendar, which became the official calendar of France for 13 years. Each day of the Republican Calendar was made up of 10 hours. Each hour was divided into 100 minutes and each minute into 100 seconds. Inspired by this historical model, Ewan transformed existing public clocks and added new ones in 10 different locations. An artist booklet illuminating the concept of revolutionary time is available from the Triennial Visitor Centre, price £1.
With additional support from Arts Council England"
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France
In more modern times, decimal time was introduced during the French Revolution in the decree of 5 October 1793:
XI. Le jour, de minuit à minuit, est divisé en dix parties, chaque partie en dix autres, ainsi de suite jusqu’à la plus petite portion commensurable de la durée.
XI. The day, from midnight to midnight, is divided into ten parts, each part into ten others, so on until the smallest measurable portion of duration.
These parts were named on 24 November 1793 (4 Frimaire of the Year II). The primary divisions were called hours, and they added:
La centième partie de l'heure est appelée minute décimale; la centième partie de la minute est appelée seconde décimale. (emphasis in original)
The hundredth part of the hour is called decimal minute;
Thus, midnight was reckoned as 10 o'clock, noon as 5 o'clock, etc. Although clocks and watches were produced with faces showing both standard time with numbers 1–24 and decimal time with numbers 1–10, decimal time never caught on; it was not officially used until the beginning of the Republican year III, 22 September 1794, and mandatory use was suspended 7 April 1795 (18 Germinal of the Year III), in the same law which introduced the original metric system. Thus, the metric system at first had no time unit, and later versions of the metric system used the second, equal to 1/86400 day, as the metric time unit.
Decimal time was introduced as part of the French Republican Calendar, which, in addition to decimally dividing the day, divided the month into three décades of 10 days each; this calendar was abolished at the end of 1805. The start of each year was determined according to which day the autumnal equinox occurred, in relation to true or apparent solar time at the Paris Observatory. Decimal time would also have been reckoned according to apparent solar time, depending on the location it was observed, as was already the practice generally for the setting of clocks.
The French made another attempt at the decimalization of time in 1897, when the Commission de décimalisation du temps was created by the Bureau des Longitudes, with the mathematician Henri Poincaré as secretary. The commission proposed a compromise of retaining the 24-hour day, but dividing each hour into 100 decimal minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. The plan did not gain acceptance and was abandoned in 1900.
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