New Dawn Clock

Unfinished Notes

The New Second

There are, on average, 86400 seconds in a day, which can be factored to 24x60x60.

The day gets longer by at least a millisecond every century or so.

The length of a second is seemingly arbitrary, defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the radiation of a cesium-133 atom.

The proposal is to change the length of a second to something more practical for human usage, allowing for a complete restructuring of our daily clock.

By slowing the second down about 4.16%, it reduced the average amount of daily seconds to 82,944, which can be factored into 4x12x12x12x12. Introducing two new units, we have a new clock system: 4 quarters in a day, 12 hours in a quarter, 12 minutes in an hour, 12 moments in a minute, 12 minutes in a second. For increased precision, we can introduce 12 instants in a second, which an instant would be the equivalent of around 86 (current) millseconds. The length of the hour and the minute would also change, with the hour getting almost a third shorter and the minute becoming over three times longer.

To fully appreciate this structure we would have to center the duodecimal, or base-12, number system. Instead of a base-10 system with the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0, we add two extra digits: A and B, which correspond to 11 and 12. In base-12, there are 40000 seconds in a day. This would be the exact same number that shows up on a clock (if it did not roll over to 00000). Every unit would thus represent a digit place on the clock.

Note about elapsed time vs. inherited time: The clock may say 12 AM, but it is the first hour of the day. Zero hours have elapsed, or completed, but we inhabit the first hour. Digital clocks typically show elapsed time because it makes mathematics easier. Inhabited time makes more sense for human usage but it means we have to do a lot of subtraction by one to do correct mathematical operations. This makes it counter-intuitive to talk about the number zero representing the first quarter of the day, and forces a trade-off between using 0-3 for symmetry or 1-4 for practicality. It remains unresolved if the day starts at 10000, or 00000, or even 11111.

The Dawn

The decision to start the day at midnight also appears to be arbitrary. An argument can be made that this makes scheduling easier in a society that is centered around the main working hours of the day. Plausible, but we live in a world now where people are working, sleeping, eating, resting at any hour of the day. A person who is employed to work through midnight learns what day they start and what day they end their labor.

The proposal here is to change the beginning position of the day so that it roughly starts at dawn. This may be a more astronomically justified definition of a day, and is much more intuitive for human beings.

If we split the day into quarters, then each quarter would roughly represent dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight (most accurately during the equinoxes).

New Symbols

We are introducing a set of 12 simple symbols to represent new digits. They are used on the clock on the home page of this website. They utilize aesthetic symmetry so that each number has a pair: 0 and 6, 1 and 11, 2 and 10, 3 and 9, 4 and 8, 5 and 7. With the exception of 0 and 6, these pairs represent complements (they add up to 12).

They are meant to be easily memorized, easily distinguishable, and easily organized on paper or digital mediums. They are also meant to be represented by single syllable words in a new language which will mirror its simplicity.

Although they come in a block form, they have also been designed to omit the block and still be understood as the same symbols with sufficient context while still maintaining their clarity. The blocks are meant to give immediate context and cleanliness.