Why does a second last… well… a second?

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Who, how and when decided to count to a second and was like “Yup. This is it. This is a second. This is how long a second is. Everybody on Earth will universally agree that this is how long a second is and use it regardless of culture, origin, intelligence or beliefs”?

In: 1035

18 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine you have to take the train at 10 am. But if your clock says “10 am” at a different moment than the clock at the train station, you might miss the train.

This was how it used to be. People were late all the time, because my clock did give a different time than your clock.

Then, some very smart people in Paris thought it would be smart to make the time the same for everybody. And decided how long a second lasts.

Now people don’t come too late anymore.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time)

*BTW I am not making this up, and it was worse than you might imagine: every city had it’s own “random” timezone, without much system like with the time zones we have now, it was pure chaos. You needed special tables to determine the time in the next city. It did not matter much until dirigibles and trains came along, hence I use trains as example.

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