The thing about human invention is that occasionally, two or more people think of an idea around the same time, and it’s difficult to determine who was first. Such is the case with Swatch’s Internet time, which is told in something called “.beats”. Rather than using hours and minutes, the solar day in the .beat system is divided into 1,000 parts equal to one minute in the French Revolutionary decimal time system, or 1 minute and 26.4 seconds of standard time.
Swatch came up with .beats to sell their special line of .beats watches. But they weren’t the only ones to divide the solar day this way. A few months before Swatch’s announcement of .beats time, a Argentinian drummer named [Charly Alberti] came up with the same idea and created a website for it to display the current Internet time of day.
The point of all this is that [Roni Bandini] has created an homage to both .beats and [Charly] in the form of a small clock. The main brain is a Seeed Studio Xiao nRF52840, with a Xiao TFT round display to show the time as well as a tribute to [Charly]. The 3D-printed stand incorporates a cylindrical power source. We think the black and white images, which [Roni] created with Dall-e, look fantastic.
Interestingly enough, the Xiao has no Internet connectivity; the time is set manually via hard-coded variable, and then the display’s RTC keeps track of the seconds and convert them to Internet time. Check out the brief build video after the break.
Interested in regular old metric time? Here’s a modern metric clock.
Usefully, a centibeat is just about the standard period of a sedentary person’s heart rate.
We may operate under different definitions for the word “useful”…
FYI Battlestar Galactica (TOS) used centons as a unit of time.
100 beats equals 1 Rhythm.
Dr. Dre is not amused.
B^)
Correction:
Swatch is not amused by Dr. Dre.
Swatch internet time (with beats) invented 1998.
Beats Electronics (manufactured the Dr. Dre Beats headphones) founded 2006.
So dumb that SWATCH .beats are on UTC+0100…
UNIX time was started after original Startrek series died, who cares. I hope human registers register mor then 32 bit registers !
You know Swatch is Swiss and they are based in UTC+1 timezone. I can see why they did that. Not at all dumb.
You mean UTC +41.67?
Swatch released the beat, a couple of months after I sent their offices in NY a proposal for them to sponsor the iTime, which I had already registered in Washington months before. They received my proposal and never responded to me, months later they launched the Beat
The article is literally about multiple people coming up with idea at the same time. I’m not doubting your story, but if you believe a huge corporation stole your idea then designed an entire line of watches based on one thing someone sent in- and released it only months later that’s a stretch.
I mean the person you are responding to is (or at least is claiming to be :-)) THE other person mentioned in the article!
I suggest you guys read Charly’s wikipedia page– tldr: it’s probably him. Long story: self-written wiki full of grandiosity and shameless self-promotion. Makes a interesting read.
Check out my 26 Lour Clock for a Universal Clock that divides day into 26 Lours.
Thanks, but I’m going to keep using my Howses clock that does 18 Howses per day on a circadian leap year cycle.
Hahah
I used to seriously conduct my life by a decimal clock, at roughly the same time that Swatch was selling Beats watches, although since mine was based on fractional Julian Days; the .0 time was noon UTC, which made for a useful span of digits here in Pacific time. I had an app to display the day number to five decimal places on my Fossil PalmOS watch. (Since .00001 day is .864 seconds, five digits give you second-like precision; three digits are sufficient for standard appointment-book stuff.)
Back when desktop widgets were a thing, I’d programmed both a single- and a five-handed analog version, and I’ve long wanted to come up with a mechanical or electromechanical version. I should see what it takes to make design escapements.
The Charly guy mentioned certainly “seems” to have led an interesting life- definitely the original “most interesting man in the world”! lol. (Read his self-written wikipedia entry, it’s entertaining).
Well, he was the baterist in the most popular ever latin american rock band, he sure has a very interesting life.
If they’d based .beats on UTC or TAI instead of UTC+1, people might’ve taken it seriously, too.