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.

  • ekky43@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Like the bastardization of the 24h clock by the television companies, doesn’t Amarican military time also allow for relative time instead of absolute? Like writing 5:00 on the second day of a time critical mission as 2900?

    I’m pretty sure I heard this somewhere, though I have yet to verify this claim.

    • 📛Maven@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Sort of? Ime you’ll sometimes hear/see things like T+2900, meaning 2900 minutes after T (T being a common placeholder for “the moment the operation began”). But unless the mission started at 0000, T+2900 doesn’t mean 0500, it means +2900 since T

      • ekky43@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I guess that does make sense, and definitely not as bad as I had misunderstood it to be.

        It feels a little weird, and I’m not sure if T+29:00 or equivalents are allowed in ISO 8601, but I have seen computer programs that represent time differences in similar ways.

        Thank you for the clarification!