Today's Switzerland - and its cherished bank secrecy - still reflect the influence of church reformer Jean Calvin, an economic think tank director tells swissinfo.
This content was published onApril 26, 2009 - 10:21
6 minutes
Xavier Comtesse, who heads the western Swiss branch of Avenir Suisse, says Calvin stood for morality in the granting of credit, but also for protection of the personal sphere.
This year marks the 500th birthday of the religious reformer whose ideas shaped the Protestant Church. In his honour Protestant denominations have designated 2009 Calvin Year.
Calvin, who spent much of his time working in Geneva, not only influenced democracy in Switzerland but modern-day thinking on both moral and financial matters, Comtesse believes.
swissinfo: What is the basis of Calvin’s Protestantism?
Xavier Comtesse: It is based on the Bible written in the language of the people, on the separation of church and state, and on the understanding that the grassroots faithful – who fund the community – choose their own priests.
This Calvinist form of institutional organisation has also over time had an influence on non-religious areas of the Swiss mentality. All state institutions remain separate from religious ones, and bottom up participation in political decisions continues from communal to national level.
Both lead to an emancipation of the people, an ’empowerment’, as we say today.
swissinfo: What would Switzerland look like today without Calvin?
X.C.: I don’t think we’d have direct democracy without this popular emancipation that was spurred on by Calvin. We would probably be a republic [with an elected president], like our neighbours. Of course when talking about German-speaking Switzerland we should mention [Zurich reformer Huldrych] Zwingli just as much as Calvin.
This communication from community organisations up to the highest state level is typical for us Swiss.
swissinfo: To what extent was Geneva more significant than Zurich?
X.C.: In those days French-speaking Switzerland did not exist. Geneva was the place to be – across the whole country. Basel was worth considering, but Zurich wasn’t. Neither was Bern nor Lausanne.
That is also why Calvin is rated so much more important internationally than Zwingli. Even in the post-Napoleonic period Zurich was smaller than Geneva both in the number of inhabitants and economically.
swissinfo: How did Calvin stamp the mark of the Reformation and the image of Switzerland on the world?
X.C.: I know most about his influence on the United States. There Calvinism is very pronounced with around 15 million Calvinists – called Presbyterians in Anglo-Saxon countries.
There are also communities in Scotland and South Korea. Worldwide there are said to be around 50 million Presbyterians. But there are very few of them in Switzerland.
swissinfo: What was Calvin’s influence on the economy and banking?
X.C.: As a reaction to the papal selling of indulgences as a mean of raising money for Rome, Calvin was one of the first church leaders to permit the granting of loans with interest – albeit tied to high moral standards.
That forged a link with the present: extortionate interest didn’t come into question, therefore the loans had to be cheap. As in religion and politics, the thinking behind this banking was to protect the citizen through high moral standards.
Also considered worth protecting by Protestantism was the personal sphere. Add this to being able to bank and you get banking secrecy.
swissinfo: Historically banking secrecy was meant to protect citizens from state interference.
X.C.: Exactly. And that’s why there are many misunderstandings concerning the term. The description ‘banking secrecy’ is actually incorrect – ‘protection of the private sphere by the bank’ would be more appropriate.
Such legal protection is not unique to Switzerland. In France for example a wife has no right to any information about her husband’s bank account – French legal law considers that his private sphere.
We Swiss simply go one step further. We protect against any state despotism. This way of thinking has historical roots in Protestantism, which in Calvin’s time sought to protect the people against the despotism of the powerful Catholic Church.
swissinfo: What remains from these Calvinist ethics today – bearing in mind the drama playing out in the world of banking and finance?
X.C.: At the moment we’re in a moral crisis. As a result we’ll soon have to grapple more with social responsibility.
That will be a form of secular Calvinism with new, still moral, but no longer religious characteristics. Regarding quality for example – new ISO standards in the area of quality attempt to rectify deficits in the area of responsibility.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is based in Geneva – like many other international institutions. This is also part of Calvin’s legacy.
Another ‘Geneva’ institution is the World Wide Web – invented at Cern. This also works ‘Calvinistically’ insofar as it enables direct access to information to the population, or rather the user.
Until now, powerful intermediaries were needed for this access. The internet has reformed access to the markets – similar to Calvin’s reformation of direct access to God.
Loys de Cheseaux was born on 4 May 1718 in Lausanne, Vaud, to Paul-Etienne Loys de Cheseaux, a banneret, and Estienne-Judith de Crousaz.[1] His brother was Charles-Louis Loys de Cheseaux.[1] He was educated by his maternal grandfather, the mathematician and philosopher Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, and wrote his first essays, under the title Essais de Physique, in 1735, aged 17.[1]
In 1736, Loys de Cheseaux installed an observatory in his father's lands in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne.[1][2] He acquired a reputation in Europe as an astronomer with the publication of his Traité de la Comète,[1] in 1744, a treatise on his observations of the comet C/1743 X1 in which he also became one of the first to state, in its modern form, what would later be known as Olbers' paradox (that, if the universe is infinite, the night sky should be bright).[2]
From 1747, Loys de Cheseaux was a corresponding member of the science academies of Göttingen, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, as well as the Academy of Sciences of Paris and the Royal Society of London.[1][2] He was offered the post of director of the St. Petersburg observatory, but declined the invitation.[2] In 1751, Loys de Cheseaux travalled to Paris and was presented to the Academy of Sciences.[2] There he died, after a short illness, on 30 November 1751, aged 33.[2]
1893 Queen Isabella Commemorative Quarter. (Image via me)
A few things I’ve picked up from researching early commemorative coins:
The people behind them always hope they can raise a ton of money for a pet project or monument or expo. They rarely do.
The designs usually get denigrated by the numismatic press – oftentimes with a venom critics reserve for Limp Bizkit albums or Michael Bay movies.
The mint melts down the excess/unsold coins. As a result, the ones that did sell end up becoming valuable decades later – screwing over collectors on a budget like yours truly.
Those issues were all in play for the 1893 Isabella Quarter.
The Queen Isabella commemorative quarter traces its beginnings to the World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. Congress had already authorized the minting of a commemorative half dollar featuring Christopher Columbus, but a group of women, led by Bertha Palmer, whose husband, Potter, owned the famed Palmer House hotel in Chicago, thought they could do better.
Spearheaded by renowned women’s rights activist, and future $1 coin subject, Susan B. Anthony, the Board of Lady Managers had been awarded $10,000 in federal funds to help manage the Columbian Expo. In early 1893, the Board went before the House Appropriations Committee to ask that the $10,000 could be paid to them in the form of 40,000 specially designed commemorative quarters, which they could then sell at a profit. Congress obliged and the Board set about becoming “the authors of the first really beautiful and artistic coin that has ever been issued by the government of the United States.”
Obviously, the Board wanted a female on the obverse and decided on Queen Isabella I of Castile, who had provided vital financial support for Columbus’s voyages. Putting a foreign monarch on U.S. currency was unprecedented (indeed, there had a been a revolution over it), but according to Coin Week, the main source of conflict was over design.
Caroline Peddle, a former student of famed artist and coin designer Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was hired by the Board to design the coin. However, her sketches, which included a seated Isabella on the obverse and the inscription “Commemorative coin issued for the Board of Lady Managers of the World’s Columbian Exposition by Act of Congress, 1492–1892” on the reverse, were deemed to look too token-like and rejected. Rather than be allowed to redesign the coin, the Mint took away the reverse side and gave it to one of their in-house artists, Charles Barber, to design.
After some more back-and-forth and additional restrictions imposed by the Mint, Peddle resigned. The Mint then cobbled together some portraits of Isabella and ultimately produced an image of a young Isabella wearing a crown on her head for the obverse. On the reverse, the Mint went with an image of a woman kneeling while holding a distaff and spindle- symbolizing her industry. The Board had suggested an image of the Woman’s Building at the Expo, and Palmer later stated that the Board disliked the Mint’s reverse image because “we did not consider [it] typical of the woman of the present day.” However, the Mint made the final decision and approved the coin design.
To say that the reception for the commemorative quarter was not warm is a bit like saying that the American public didn’t embrace Apple’s Newton. The American Journal of Numsimatics was particularly brutal:
[W]e do not know who designed it, but in this instance, as in the half dollar, the contrast between examples of the numismatic art of the nation, as displayed on the Columbian coins, on the one hand, and the spirited and admirable work of the architects of the buildings, for instance, on the other, is painful. If these coins really represent the highest achievements of our medalist and our mints, under the inspiration of an opportunity without restrictions, the like of which has never been presented hitherto in the history of our national coinage, we might as well despair of its future…
The American Journal of Numismatics in October 1893, quoted by PCGS.
The Journal also drew a “mournful” comparison between the reverse design of the kneeling woman holding the distaff and spindle and the well-known “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?” anti-slavery Hard Times Token. Surely, the Board felt vindicated by that line – although there’s no evidence Palmer or anyone else affiliated with them ever wrote to the Mint to say: “See? I told you we should gone with the building on the reverse.”
1838 HT-81 “Am I Not A Woman & A Sister?” (Image via me)
Sales figures, meanwhile, were disappointing. Of the 40,000 coins minted, a little more than half (21,180) ended up selling. According to NGC, the quarter’s sales were cannibalized by the Columbian Expo half dollar, which sold for the same price and was more widely available at the fair (5 million Columbian Expo half dollars were minted – 125 times as many compared to the Isabella quarter). While it didn’t come close to selling out, Coin Week points out that the quarters, which sold for $1 each, ended up being profitable for the Board. A $20,000-plus stream of revenue may not have been much, but it was double the original federal appropriation awarded to the Board. Of the remaining 19,000-plus quarters, approximately 15,000 went back to the Mint for melting.
1893 Columbian Expo Half Dollar. (Image via me)
In recent years, the coin’s reputation has been rehabilitated and has become a highly sought-after collector’s item. Contemporary reviewers have praised its quaint design and its uniqueness among U.S. commemorative coins (until the modern commemoratives came around, it held the distinction as the only commemorative quarter in U.S. history – as well as the only one to depict a foreign monarch). Even the reverse of the coin has been somewhat vindicated. Art historian Cornelius Vermeule argued that the design wasn’t necessarily evocative of the anti-slavery token and even traced elements of it back to antiquities. “[S]ome details of drapery to a servant girl from the East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, work of about 460 B.C. with additions and revisions in the first or second centuries A.D.,” he wrote.
I love the design and how it distinguishes this coin from other early commemoratives. Too many coins from that era have a generic male bust on the obverse and either an eagle or state symbol on the reverse. Because of the relative scarcity of this coin, buying one wasn’t cheap (this one had been cleaned, which lowered its value, but it still ended up costing over $100). The price tag was worth it, as this has become one of my favorite coins.
So I guess the lesson here is that I should buy more modern commemoratives – even those that I think are ugly. After all, maybe they’ll skyrocket in value in 100 years…
It is very unlikely. The original Swiss confederation in the 13th century was made up of people from difficult to access mountain valleys within the Holy Roman Empire. They had a status that made them directly accountable to the emperor but were threatened by Habsburg “expansionism” within the empire. Their objective was to protect themselves against the Habsburg but also to ensure the peaceful management of the important trade routes through the Alps.
Although these regions are easy to access today both by train and by car, it doesn’t require much imagination to realise just how wild the place must have been before tunnels and bridges were built to make the Gotthard pass more accessible:
Even then it was rather scary in the best of weathers:
It is only round the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that it was made secure. Today the region is a paradise for hikers. So long as the weather is good!
It was a region inhabited by mountain farmers who made some money providing shelter to the merchants crossing the Alps with their wares.
Switzerland grew progressively over the centuries to become the country that we know today. It was to take hundreds of years before it became a rich country. In fact that happened in the last hundred to a hundred and fifty years with the rise of tourism, banking and the service industries that are the basis of the modern economy.
To earn money many Swiss worked as mercenaries in foreign armies including the Pope’s. This probably made them a well trained force with experience of real fighting. They would also have known the ground well and the very remoteness and wildness of the region would have made them a tough proposition to conquer!
There is no historical evidence of any Templar influence in the early history of Switzerland and no particular reason for them to want to go to a small region withing the Holy Roman Empire which had neither fortune, nor particular interest at the time.
"The current Knights Templar Headquarters are in Geneva. This country befits and holds similar many of the most common and closely guarded values of the original Knights Templar.
The oldest abbey established in Switzerland is Sion, in the Valais Canton. There is a twin peaks overlooking the town, meaning new Jerusalem or holy place in the Alps. The twin mountains house the cathedral of Sion and the Castle Tourbillion. These date back to the beginning times of Swiss Confederation formation around 1291. A time when the Templars were known to be looking to establish a European mainland stronghold outside of the Holy Land as they were being pushed out of the Levant by the Muslims and the Christians had lost their stomach to fight on any longer.
These are suggestions that certain historians and conspiracists alike deem to be true that suggest that the Knights Templar did in fact form Switzerland. The evidence and likelihood seem pretty plausible to me. The county of Valais in the city of Sion has a particular Templar tie in the founding history. Rumors have always floated that this is where the Templars originally set up shop after their flight from France.
In the history of the first Swiss Cantons there are tales of white coated knights mysteriously appearing and helping the locals to gain their independence against foreign domination.
The founding of the early Switzerland pinpoints exactly to the period when the Templars were being persecuted in France by King Philip IV of France.
Switzerland is directly to the east of France and would have been particularly easy for fleeing Templar brothers from the whole region of France to get to.
The Templars were one of the earliest known banking systems in early day Europe. King Phillip in fact was deeply in debt to the Templars.
Not only were the Templars big into banking, but also in farming, engineering, and clock making (of an early type). These same aspects can be seen as importance to the commencement and gradual forming of the separate states that would eventually be Switzerland.
The Swiss don’t really know the ins and outs of their earliest history (or suggest that they don’t.)
They are famous for being secretive and independent as were the Templars.
The famous Templar Cross is incorporated into the flags of many of the Swiss Cantons. As are other emblems, such as keys and lambs, that were particularly important to the Knights Templar.
The Swiss were and are famous for their religious tolerance – and so were the Templars"
As we have argued in an earlier post, certain historians and conspiracists alike suggest that the Knights Templar did in fact form Switzerland. The evidence and likelihood seem pretty plausible. At the same time hard evidence is scarce and circumstantial at best. Historical fact is that the Order of the Temple counted on the current Swiss territory only two commanderies: La Chaux and Geneva.
La Chaux in Cossonay is attested in 1223 and Geneva (district of Rive) is quoted in 1277. These had other dependent houses, particularly in Cologny, Bénex (commune of Prangins) and Entremont (commune of Yvonand). All these establishments belonged to the baillie (or preceptory) of Burgundy, subdivision of the Templar province of France.
La Chaux Commanderie was given by the lords of Cossonay to the Knights Templar before 1223. This commandery does not seem to have been particularly profitable, because in 1277 part of the possessions was sold to the Franciscan order to pay debts. After the dissolution of the Order, it passed in 1315 to the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The commandery depended the hospices of Orbe, Villars-Sainte-Croix and Montbrelloz.
After the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century, the commandery was secularized, subordinated to the last commander, then in 1539 to the brothers of the reformer Guillaume Farel, finally sold in 1540 to Robert du Gard.
In Geneva there is a Ruelle de Templiers. This name comes from a house and a chapel of the Knights Templar who were there. At the suppression of this order, in 1312, they passed, as everywhere, to the Hospitallers of Saint John. This establishment was destroyed in 1534 with the suburbs of the left bank.
After official talks with the Swiss leaders, the pope will make the short journey to the WCC headquarters for an ecumenical prayer session with local church representatives. After lunch at the Ecumenical Institute at the Chteau BosseyExternal link in neighbouring canton Vaud, he will return to the WCC for talks.
Why is the pope visiting the WCC? I thought the Roman Catholic Church was not a member of the Geneva-based organisation.
Founded in 1948, the World Council of Churches (WCC)External link brings together the world’s Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran and Reformed churches but not the Catholic Church, with whom it has had a complicated relationship. The pope’s visit goes under the motto ‘Walking, praying and working together’ and is the result of five years’ efforts by WCC officials to persuade him to come to Geneva following Francis’ appointment in 2013.
Despite not being affiliated, around 50 Vatican observers participate in WCC committees dealing with issues such as peace promotion, religious doctrine and education. The pope’s trip is thus seen as a highly significant working visit and attempt to boost Christian unity.
Geneva will be the second European visit by Francis with a clear ecumenical accent after his visit to Lund in Sweden in October 2016 to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation alongside leaders of the Lutheran World Federation.
Will he hold a mass?
Yes. The pope is due to hold a mass at 5.30pm at the Palexpo convention centreExternal link next to Geneva Airport. Some 41,000 lucky ticket-holders will be waiting for him but the event will also be broadcast live on Swiss public television, RTS/SRF/RSI.
Most of the Swiss population are Christian but Christianity is on the decline and the percentage of non-believers is growing. Catholics are the biggest faith group – 37% of permanent residents in 2016, down from 47% in 1970, according to the Federal Statistical Office.
Over a quarter of all Swiss Catholics attend a religious service between six to 12 times a year. A survey commissioned by the Swiss Catholic Bishops Conference on marital and family issues in 2014 revealed liberal attitudes to sex and marriage.
The percentage of Swiss Protestants has fallen sharply since 1970 from 49% to 25% in 2015. Geneva, the city of Jean Calvin, is sometimes referred to as the Protestant Rome. However, times have changed. In 2016, around 35% of the city’s residents claimed to be Catholic, while 24% said they were Protestant.
Pope Francis is welcomed at Geneva Airport by Alain Berset, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year Keystone
Pope Francis has visited the Swiss city of Geneva – a centre of Protestantism – on a whirlwind one-day tour to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and to promote Christian unity.
This content was published onJune 21, 2018 - 21:23
4 minutes
swissinfo.ch/ds-jh-sb
The pope flew into Geneva – historically known as the “Protestant Rome” for its links to John Calvin – on a hot Thursday morning for a packed schedule that began with a meeting at the airport with Swiss government officials.
After a 20-minute tête-à-tête, Alain Berset, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year, told reporters that he shared the pope’s commitment to peace and human rights.
Berset said the pope had urged Switzerland to use dialogue to help prevent conflicts around the world. The two leaders also discussed the issue of immigration and refugee boats from north Africa that were being blocked by Italy.
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‘The pope and Switzerland have much in common’
This content was published onJun 21, 2018 Swiss President Alain Berset says Switzerland and the pope share common values. (SRF/swissinfo.ch)
Francis was then driven to the WCC headquarters in Geneva just south of the airport for an ecumenical prayer session with local church representatives. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the WCC, which brings together the world’s Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran and Reformed churches, but it does send observers to participate in several WCC committees.
The papal visit, which went under the motto “Walking, praying and working together”, marks a significant effort to bridge the divide between the Vatican and other Christian churches.
At the WCC, the 81-year-old Argentinian pope warned worshippers against the dangers of “unbridled consumerism”, saying it leads to the exclusion of children and the elderly. “We have lost our direction,” he said.
In his speeches at the WCC and throughout the day, the pope called for deeper unity between the Catholic Church and other Christian faiths.
“I have desired to come here, a pilgrim in quest of unity and peace,” he told the prayer gathering.
It is the third time that a pope has visited the WCC after Paul VI in 1960 and John Paul II 35 years ago. Historically, divisions between the Catholic Church and the Protestant confessions have run deep.
The pope also referred to the “ecumenism of blood”, condemning the indiscriminate murder of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestant Christians.
“Let us also look to our many brothers and sisters in various parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East, who suffer because they are Christians,” he said.
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Papal watching
This content was published onJun 21, 2018 Here are some colourful moments taken during Pope Francis’s visit to Switzerland.
The pope ended his one-day visit by celebrating a mass at 5.30pm at the Palexpo convention centreExternal link next to Geneva Airport for 30,000 people, according to a police estimate. The organisers said 37,000 had attended. But this was still slightly down on the expected figure of 41,000.
Worshippers sat on chairs in the massive hangar, which hosts the Geneva International Motor Show every year and is the size of six football pitches.
Most of the lucky ticket-holders were from Switzerland – cantons Geneva, Fribourg, Jura, Valais and Zurich – but also from neighbouring France, and even as far away as Spain, Slovakia and Croatia. Some had started queuing as early as 7.30am.
The pontiff was greeted like a rock star with cheers and a sea of mobile phones when he arrived in the hall in his “Popemobile”.
Speaking in Italian and French on a simple stage which featured a large white cross overhead and a drawing of the Alps, he urged the audience to “rediscover the courage of silence and of prayer”.
A handful of former Swiss guardsmen, dressed in traditional blue-red-and-yellow-striped Renaissance-inspired uniforms, were also present for the mass and ceremonial activities at the airport.
In Rome, the Pontifical Swiss GuardExternal link has been tasked with protecting the pope and his official palace in the Vatican City since 1506, when the first Swiss mercenaries arrived on request of the then Pope Julius II.
Pope Francis ended his mass to huge applause by thanking the Geneva people and the Swiss authorities.
“I salute the citizens of this beautiful city,” he declared. “I want to thank the Swiss government for the friendly invitation and precious collaboration.”
Everybody knows that there are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in minute. But in 1793, the French smashed the old clock system in favor of French Revolutionary Time, which was a 10-hour day, with 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. This thoroughly modern system had a few practical benefits, chief among them being a simplified way to do time-related math. If we want to know when a day is 80% complete, decimal time simply says "at the end of the eighth hour," whereas standard time requires us to say "at 19 hours, 12 minutes." French Revolutionary Time was a more elegant solution to that math problem. The problem was that every living person already had a well-established way of telling the time, and old habits die hard!
French Revolutionary Time officially began on November 24, 1793 although conceptual work around the system had been going on since the 1750s. The French manufactured clocks and watches showing both decimal time and standard time on their faces (allowing for both conversion and confusion). These clock faces were spectacularly weird.
The system proved unpopular. People were unfamiliar with switching systems of time, and there were few practical reasons for non-mathematicians to change how they told time. (The same could not be said of the metric system of weights and measurements, which helped to standardize commerce; weights and measurements often differed in neighboring countries, but clocks generally did not.) Furthermore, replacing every clock and watch in the country was an expensive proposition. The French officially stopped using decimal time after just 17 months. French Revolutionary Time became non-mandatory starting on April 7, 1795. This didn't stop some areas of the country from continuing to observe decimal time, and a few decimal clocks remained in use for years afterwards, presumably leading to many missed appointments!
LIVE NORMAL AND DECIMAL TIME
Live NORMAL time
Live DECIMAL time
DECIMAL TO NORMAL / NORMAL TO DECIMAL TIME CONVERTER
Enter decimall time:
Use HH:MM:SS format
Result in "normal" time:
Enter "normal" time:
Use HH:MM:SS format
Result in decimall time:
Some applications using decimal time are available in both Google Play and the Apple Store. For example, for Android - DecimalTime ; for Apple - DeciTime .
Se denomina tiempo decimal a la expresión de la extensión del día utilizando unidades que se encuentran relacionadas mediante un sistema decimal. Este término es utilizado para referirse específicamente al tiempo revolucionario francés, el cual divide al día en 10 horas decimales, cada hora decimal en 100 minutos decimales y cada minuto decimal en 100 segundos decimales, en contraposición al tiempo estándar usual, en el cual el día se divide en 24 horas, cada hora en 60 minutos y cada minuto en 60 segundos.
El tiempo decimal fue utilizado en China a lo largo de casi toda su historia junto con el tiempo duodecimal. Hacia el año 1000 a. C. el día que se extendía desde una medianoche a la medianoche siguiente se encontraba dividido en 12 horas dobles (chino tradicional: 時辰; chino simplificado: 时辰; pinyin: shíchen) y 100 ke (Hanzi: 刻; Pinyin: kè).[1] Durante tres períodos breves se utilizaron un número diferente de kes por día, 120 ke durante 5–3 A.d. C., 96 ke durante 507–544, y 108 ke durante 544–565. Varios de los casi 50 calendarios chinos también dividieron cada ke en 100 fen, aunque en otros cada ke era dividido en 60 fen. En 1280, el calendario Shoushi (Season Granting) subdividió a cada fen en 100 miao, creando un sistema decimal completo de 100 ke, 100 fen y 100 miao.[2] El tiempo decimal chino dejó de ser utilizado en 1645 cuando el calendario Shixian (Constant Conformity), basado en la astronomía europea llevada a China por los jesuitas, adoptó 96 ke por día junto con 12 horas dobles, con lo cual cada ke corresponde exactamente a un cuarto de hora.[3]
En tiempos modernos, el tiempo decimal fue introducido durante la Revolución francesa por un decreto promulgado el 5 de octubre de 1793:
XI. Le jour, de minuit à minuit, est divisé en dix parties, chaque partie en dix autres, ainsi de suite jusqu’à la plus petite portion commensurable de la durée.
XI. El día, desde medianoche hasta la medianoche siguiente, se divide en diez partes, cada parte a su vez se compone de diez partes, y así sucesivamente hasta la duración de tiempo más pequeña que se pueda medir.
Se les dio nombre a estas partes el 24 de noviembre de 1793 (4 Frimario del Año II). Las divisiones primarias se denominaron horas, y se agregó:
La centième partie de l'heure est appelée minute décimale; la centième partie de la minute est appelée seconde décimale. (énfasis en el original)
La centésima parte de una hora es denominada minuto decimal; la centésima parte de un minuto es denominada segundo decimal.
Por lo tanto, medianoche correspondía a la hora 10, mediodía a la hora 5, etc. Si bien se fabricaron relojes con cuadrantes mostrando el tiempo estándar con los números 1–24 y el tiempo decimal con los números 1–10, el tiempo decimal nunca contó con gran aceptación; no fue utilizado de manera oficial hasta comienzos del año Republicano III, 22 de septiembre de 1794, y el uso obligatorio fue suspendido el 7 de abril de 1795 (18 Germinal del Año III), mediante la misma ley que introdujo el sistema métrico original. Por lo tanto, inicialmente el sistema métrico no poseía una unidad de tiempo, y versiones posteriores del sistema métrico utilizan el segundo, igual a 1/86400 de día, como unidad de tiempo métrico.
El tiempo decimal fue introducido como parte del calendario republicano francés, en el cual además de dividir el día en forma decimal, dividió al mes en tres décadas de 10 días cada una; este calendario fue abolido a finales del 1805. El comienzo de cada año era determinado según el día en él tenía lugar el equinoccio de otoño, en relación con el tiempo solar aparente o verdadero en el Observatorio de París. El tiempo decimal habría sido expresado también según el tiempo solar aparente, dependiendo de la posición desde la cual se lo registraba, como ya era la costumbre general para ajustar los relojes.
En 1897 los franceses realizaron otro intento de decimalizar el tiempo, cuando se creó la Commission de décimalisation du temps en el Bureau des Longitudes, siendo secretario el matemático Henri Poincaré. La comisión propuso un compromiso, al mantener el día de 24 horas, pero dividir cada hora en 100 minutos decimales, y cada minuto en 100 segundos. El plan no tuvo buena acogida y fue abandonado en 1900.
Hay exactamente 86.400 segundos estándar (véase SI para una definición actual del segundo estándar) en un día estándar, pero en el sistema de tiempo decimal francés hay 100.000 segundos decimales en un día, por lo que el segundo decimal es más corto que su contraparte.
Son los científicos y los programadores de computadoras lo que utilizan en forma más asidua el tiempo decimal del día en forma de día fraccional. El tiempo estándar de 24 horas es convertido en un día fraccional simplemente mediante dividir el número de horas pasadas desde la medianoche por 24 para obtener una fracción decimal. Por lo tanto medianoche es 0,0 día, mediodía es 0,5 d, etc., lo cual se puede componer con cualquier tipo de fecha, tales como:
Es posible utilizar tantos sitios decimales como sea necesario de acuerdo a la precisión requerida, de forma que 0,5 d = 0,500000 d. Los días fraccionarios a menudo son expresados en UTC o TT, aunque las fechas Julianas utilizan fecha/tiempo astronómico anterior a 1925 (cada fecha comenzaba en el 0h por lo tanto ".0" = mediodía) y Microsoft Excel utiliza la zona de tiempo local de la computadora. El uso de días fraccionarios reduce el número de unidades utilizadas en cálculos de tiempo de cuatro (días, horas, minutos, segundos) a una sola (días). A menudo los astrónomos utilizan días fraccionarios para registrar sus observaciones, y fueron indicados haciendo referencia al Paris Mean Time por el matemático y astrónomo francés del siglo xviii Pierre-Simon Laplace en su libro, Traité de Mécanique Céleste, tal como en estos ejemplos:
... et la distance périhélie, égale à 1,053095 ; ce qui a donné pour l'instant du passage au périhélie, sept.29,10239, temps moyen compté de minuit à Paris.
Les valeurs précédentes de a, b, h, l, relatives à trois observations, ont donné la distance périhélie égale à 1,053650; et pour l'instant du passage, sept.29,04587; ce qui diffère peu des résultats fondés sur cinq observations.
Días fraccionales fueron utilizados durante el siglo xix por el astrónomo británico John Herschel en su libro, Outlines of Astronomy, como se ilustra en estos ejemplos:
Between Greenwich noon of the 22d and 23d of March, 1829, the 1828th equinoctial year terminates, and the 1829th commences. This happens at 0 d•286003, or at 4 h 51 m 50 s •66 Greenwich Mean Time ... For example, at 12 h 0 m 0 s Greenwich Mean Time, or 0 d•500000...
En general el sistema de segundos fraccionales es más utilizado que el de días fraccionales. En efecto, esta es la representación en una única unidad que utilizan numerosos lenguajes de programación, incluidos C, y parte de los estándares UNIX/POSIX utilizados por Mac OS X, Linux, etc.; para convertir días fraccionales en segundos fraccionales, multiplican el número por 86400. Tiempos absolutos son a menudo expresados relativos a la medianoche del 1 de enero de 1970. Otros sistemas pueden utilizar un punto cero distinto, pueden contar en milisegundos en vez de segundos, etc.
El 23 de octubre de 1998, la compañía fabricante de relojes Suiza, Swatch, presentó un tiempo decimal denominado Swatch Internet Time, el cual divide al día en 1000 beats (cada uno 86,4 s) contados en el rango 000–999, con @000 medianoche y @500 mediodía CET (UTC +1), en contraposición al UTC.[4] La empresa ha vendido relojes que indican el Tiempo de Internet.
Internet Time ha sido criticado por utilizar un origen diferente al utilizado por el Horario universal, tergiversar CET al presentarlo como "Biel Mean Time", y por no tener unidades más precisas, aunque ciertas organizaciones han propuesto los "centibeats" (864 ms) y "milibeats" (86.4 ms).
Distintas personas han propuesto un rango de variaciones al tiempo decimal, dividiendo al día en diferente número de unidades y subunidades con diversos nombres. La mayoría están basados en días fraccionarios, de forma que un formato de tiempo decimal puede ser fácilmente convertido en otro, de forma tal que todos estos son equivalentes:
Algunas propuestas de tiempo decimal están basadas en unidades de medidas alternativas del tiempo métrico. La diferencia entre el tiempo métrico y el tiempo decimal es que en el tiempo métrico se definen las unidades para medir intervalos de tiempo, tal como se lo mide con un cronómetro, mientras que el tiempo decimal define el tiempo del día, tal como lo mide un reloj. Así como el tiempo estándar utiliza como base el segundo la unidad métrica de tiempo, las escalas de tiempo decimal propuestas pueden utilizar otras unidades métricas.
Swatch Internet Time (or .beat time) is a decimal time system introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of the marketing campaign for their line of ".beat" watches. Those without a watch could use the Internet to view the current time on the watchmaker's website, but now a dedicated wiki serves the purpose.[1] The concept of .beat time is similar to decimal minutes in French Revolutionary decimal time.[2]
Instead of hours and minutes, in Swatch Time the mean solar day is divided into 1,000 equal parts called .beats, meaning each .beat lasts 86.4 seconds (1.440 minutes) in standard time, and an hour lasts for approximately 42 .beats. The time of day always references the amount of time that has passed since midnight (standard time) in Biel, Switzerland, where Swatch's headquarters is located. For example, @248 BEATS indicates a time 248 .beats after midnight, or 248⁄1000 of a day (just over 5 hours and 57 minutes; or 5:57 AM UTC+1).
There are no time zones in Swatch Internet Time; it is a globally unified timekeeping system based on what Swatch calls "Biel Mean Time" (BMT), the time zone conventionally known as Central European Time or West Africa Time. Note that it is based on the time zone and not the actual mean solar time measured in Biel. Also, unlike civil time in Switzerland and many other countries, Swatch Internet Time has never observed daylight saving time (DST), even prior to more recent decisions to abandon DST in certain locales.[3]
Swatch Internet Time was announced on 23 October 1998, in a ceremony at the Junior Summit '98,[4] attended by Nicolas G. Hayek, president and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, president of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and then director of the MIT Media Lab. During the summit, Swatch Internet Time became the official time system for Nation.1, an online country (supposedly) created and run by children.
A Swatch watch showing .beat time in the bottom part of the display
During 1999, Swatch produced several models of watch, branded "Swatch .beat", that displayed Swatch Internet Time as well as standard time, and even convinced a few websites (such as CNN.com) to use the new format.[5]PHP's date() function has a format specifier, 'B', which returns the Swatch Internet Time notation for a given time stamp.[6] It was also used as a time reference on ICQ, and the online role-playing gamePhantasy Star Online used it since its launch on the Dreamcast in 2000 to try to facilitate cross-continent gaming (as the game allowed Japanese, American and European players to mingle on the same servers). In March 2001, Ericsson released the T20e, a mobile phone which gave the user the option of displaying Internet Time. Outside these areas, it is infrequently used. While Swatch still offers the concept on its website, it no longer markets Beat watches.[citation needed] In July 2016, Swatch released Touch Zero Two, its second wirelessly connected watch, with Swatch Internet Time function.
In early 1999, Swatch began a marketing campaign about the launch of their Beatnik satellite, intended to service a set of Internet Time watches. They were criticized for planning to use an amateur radio frequency for broadcasting a commercial message (an act banned by international treaties). The satellite was intended to be deployed by hand from the Mir space station. Swatch instead donated the transmitter batteries for use in normal Mir functions, and the satellite never broadcast.[7]
The concept was touted as an alternative, decimal measure of time. One of the supposed goals was to simplify the way people in different time zones communicate about time, mostly by eliminating time zones altogether. It also does away with the division of the day into 12 or 24 parts (hours), then 60 parts (minutes), then 60 parts (seconds), then 1000 parts (milliseconds). Furthermore, there is no confusion between the AM/PM system and 24-hour time.
Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided into 1,000 parts called .beats. Each .beat lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. One .beat is equal to one decimal minute in French decimal time.
Although Swatch does not specify units smaller than one .beat, third party implementations have extended the standard by adding "centibeats" or "sub-beats", for extended precision: @248.00. Each "centibeat" is a hundredth of a .beat and is therefore equal to one French decimal second (0.864 seconds).[8][9]
There are no time zones; instead, the new time scale of Biel Mean Time (BMT) is used, based on the company's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland. Despite the name, BMT does not refer to mean solar time at the Biel meridian (7°15′E), but to the standard time there. It is equivalent to Central European Time and West Africa Time, or UTC+1.
Like UTC, Swatch Internet Time is the same throughout the world. For example, when the time is 875 .beats, or @875, in New York, it is also @875 in Tokyo. Unlike civil time in most European countries, Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time, and thus it matches Central European Time during (European) winter and Western European Summer Time, which is observed by the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal and Spain's Canary Islands during summer.
The most distinctive aspect of Swatch Internet Time is its notation; as an example, "@248" would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight, equivalent to a fractional day of 0.248 CET, or 04:57:07.2 UTC. No explicit format was provided for dates, although the Swatch website formerly displayed the Gregorian calendar date in the order day-month-year, separated by periods and prefixed by the letter d (e.g. d31.01.99).[citation needed]
Nous sommes heureux de partager avec vous, amis pèlerins, la joie de la rencontre fraternelle ! Ce chemin se veut être une démarche de pèlerinage dans l’esprit de Saint François. Accueillir la fraternité comme un cadeau, rechercher la simplicité et même la sobriété, vivre l’instant présent sans se soucier, c’est s’imprégner petit à petit de l’esprit de l’évangile tel que St François a choisi de le vivre. Le chemin est ouvert à toutes et tous et il apportera une joie authentique à celles et ceux qui auront au plus vrai d’eux-mêmes la paix du cœur.
Chemins de foi, chemins pour tous
Depuis de nombreux siècles, des pèlerins ont traversé l’Europe pour se rendre en Terre Sainte, à St Jacques de Compostelle, à Rome … pour des raisons spirituelles essentiellement mais ensuite aussi pour des raisons économiques et, plus récemment, pour goûter aux plaisirs de la marche, des paysages, du silence et de la solitude …
Aujourd’hui, de plus en plus de personnes, croyantes ou non, empruntent ces chemins tracés par les premiers pèlerins.
Un peu partout, des associations se sont créées pour redonner vie à ces itinéraires, notamment ceux vers Compostelle, mais aussi celui de Canterbury à Rome (« via francigena »), le Chemin de St-Michel, et bien d’autres. C’est aussi le cas pour ce « récent » chemin de 1500 km vers Assise.
Ainsi, elles témoignent d’un intérêt renouvelé pour la découverte du patrimoine culturel et artistique et pour une autre forme de ressourcement personnel ou de recherche d’épanouissement par un nouveau style de loisirs.
Tema anterior
1838 HT-81 “Am I Not A Woman & A Sister?” (Image via me)
1893 Columbian Expo Half Dollar. (Image via me)
French Revolutionary Time officially began on November 24, 1793 although conceptual work around the system had been going on since the 1750s. The French manufactured clocks and watches showing both decimal time and standard time on their faces (allowing for both conversion and confusion). These clock faces were spectacularly weird.
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