France to adopt Metric Time

Paris April 1st.  2022 - AFC

      France will officially become the first country in the world in modern time to adopt metric time, according to a surprise announcement made yesterday evening on national television news, and confirmed by a spokesman for President Macron.  The change to metric time will complete the process of metrication launched over two centuries ago in the wake of the French Revolution.  Subject to official confirmation, M-Day is scheduled for April 2023, leaving French businesses, transport operators and the general public just a year to prepare for the event.
   Even as the news was going out on national television in France, the wraps were being removed from the first metric clocks already covertly installed at key tourist locations in Paris by a team from the city hall.  "We need the world to see that France is still a revolutionary country !" said mayor Annie Dalgo, who is also the Socialist Party's candidate in the upcoming French presidential elections.

      Critics have reacted swiftly to news of the plan, claiming that the switchover to metric time will lead to panic and confusion on a par with the Millennium bug, and should not be introduced in a hurry; but in Paris a senior member of the official National Time Metrication Coordinating and Organising Committee, the CNOCTM, confirmed that the change to metric time has now been approved by France's highest arbiter, the Constitutional Council.
       Under the plans first put forward in 1791 by Alphonse Touta-Leurre, a Corsican watchmaker who rose to prominence in Parisian scientific circles in revolutionary France, days in France will be subdivided as from next year into ten metric hours, and each hour divided into one hundred metric minutes. However plans to name these units Meurs and Centimeurs have been shelved in spite of the possibility of confusion following the changeover. A secret poll carried out by Paris-based Ipsos suggested that changing the names of the units as well as the units themselves would lead to even greater confusion.

      A memorandum on preparing for the changeover will be circulated in the coming month to all local authorities and the directors of all public institutions in France. It requires clockfaces on all public buildings, and  timepieces in all public services to be prepared for the changeover by February 1st next year at the latest. Clock faces on historic monuments are however exempt from the changeover, and will continue to show 24-hour time as part of France's national heritage. A research team at the ENSMM digital micromechanics school at the university in Besançon, France's historic watchmaking capital, is believed to have perfected a patch to update the software of most digital clocks and watches manufactured since 2005, except for those made in China.
      Commenting on the changeover, which for over a year has been the subject of secret negotiations between leading French industry chiefs and the directors of major public services, a senior executive of the French rail service SNCF said: "We are quite confident that we will be fully prepared for this historic change in which France will lead the world.  This is a very positive step forward, and as far as the railways are concerned, people will feel that the trains are faster, even if this is not the case. For example, from April 1st next year, the TGV (high speed train) service between Paris and Lyon will take under an hour, compared to two hours with the present system."
     But questioned on a late-night French TV show,  a spokesman for Air France, who had no prior knowledge of the project, expressed considerable alarm. "I do not think that this is a very sensible plan. Ooh la la. But imagine the confusion we will have in the skies over France. Unless everyone adopts this new metric time,  we will have planes leaving from Frankfurt at 8 o'clock in the morning, and reaching Paris at 4 o'clock in the morning the same day. It will be crazy!  No no no, I cannot believe that France will do this alone. "
      Contacted by P Geest, a correspondent for French television news channel LCI,  European Commission Weights and Measures Directorate spokesman Hengst Driyfødder suggested that Brussels may block moves by France to take a unilateral decision of this nature. " I don't think that France will be able to take such an important decision without EU approval, " he observed. "It might be better to postpone the changeover for a year or two, so that all countries in the European Union can move over to metric time together. Maybe on April 1st 2024."



And if you're still incredulous about this.... the idea is not as strange as it might seem, and France did actually use metric time, or decimal time, for two years in the Revolutionary period, from 1793 to 1795; the day was divided in to ten hours, and each hour into 100 minutes. The system was scrapped  in 1795 when France introduced the Republican calendar, which was used until 1806. This calendar divided the year into twelve months (years started with the Autumnal equinox), and each month was divided into three decades. The months had names derived from the farming calendar or from the weather, and included Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Floreal and  Thermidor. .