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]
Logotipo del Swatch Internet Time.Un reloj Swatch que muestra el tiempo .beat en la parte inferior de la pantalla.Hora Internet (BMT).
La hora Internet —llamada también Swatch Internet Time o Biel Mean Time (BMT)— fue un concepto inventado por la empresa de relojes Swatch (situada en Biel, Suiza) en 1998 como una estrategia de mercado, representando una manera universal totalmente nueva de medir el tiempo. Su unidad de tiempo es el beat (‘pulso’, en idioma inglés).
La empresa Swatch dividió el día en 1000 unidades llamadas beats. Un beat equivale a un minuto y 26,4 segundos. Es decir, las 12 horas del día, en el viejo sistema, equivalen a @500 (500 beats).
La idea clave estriba en que esta hora es universal, esto es, no depende de la zona horaria en la que esté situada la persona. Así, las @500 es el mismo instante en España, Argentina o Nueva York, aunque las horas locales serán diferentes (13:00, 8:00 y 7:00 horas, respectivamente, en verano). De esta manera, si varias personas quieren citarse por Internet, pueden hacerlo especificando una hora BMT, la cual será independiente de su localización física. Esto evita los tediosos cálculos de diferencias horarias.
Swatch no sólo ha creado una nueva forma de medir el tiempo, también ha creado un nuevo meridiano: el meridiano de Biel, Suiza, sede de Swatch. El Biel Mean Time (BMT) es la frecuencia universal para la Hora Internet. Un día en hora Internet comienza a los @000, a la medianoche CET (horario centroeuropeo de invierno). El meridiano BMT se inauguró el 23 de octubre de 1998.
Aunque la empresa Swatch asegura que su sistema es único e inmejorable y que facilita la forma en que se maneja el tiempo en Internet, existe polémica con referencia a su uso, considerando como principio que fue inventada por la empresa suiza de relojes Swatch, en 1998 como una estrategia de mercado y que cuenta con el respaldo de Nicolas Negroponte, dado que se puso en marcha en el Media Labs del MIT.
Algunas críticas que se le hacen a este sistema es que:
No es un sistema normalizado de medición del tiempo.
No se fundamenta en una base científica.
Establece el punto del Meridiano de Biel (ciudad sede de la fábrica de relojes) como referencia.
No reconoce el manejo de husos horarios.
A pesar de los esfuerzos por compenetrar al mercado con esa idea, dicho proyecto tiene poco uso ya que las empresas prefieren seguir normativas probadas y funcionales que meros experimentos. El tiempo universal coordinado (UTC) es, hoy por hoy, la única norma de tiempo que rige mundialmente. Para saber más se puede consultar la norma ISO 8601.
Suffice to say, the French Revolution left a lasting legacy on the world. To rattle off a few of the lesser achievements: the rise of liberal democracy, the weakening of the Catholic Church and feudal systems, and the plain decoration of the rights of men. Of course, none of these hold a candle to Internet Time.
You know the metric system? Depending on where you live, it’s either the natural order of measurement or a sick perversion of freedom. The metric system was one of the innovations borne out of the French Revolution. But not every unit of measurement devised by the French stuck. You’ve got your meters and your grams, of course, all divisible and multipliable by ten. But when was the last time you used a decimal minute?
A French decimal time pocket watch. Photo from Svalbard, who still makes decimal wristwatches available for purchase.
There are 100 decimal minutes in a decimal hour and 100 decimal seconds in a decimal minute. A day has 10 decimal hours. Ten days make a décade—a week—and three décades make a month. Unfortunately, thanks to our planet’s pesky revolution around the sun, the calendar still needed 12 months, plus a few bonus days at the end of the calendar to round out the year. The French Revolutionary Calendar was introduced in 1793 and abolished by Napoleon just 13 years later, but decimal time didn’t even make it out of the First Republic—it was made “non-mandatory” in just 17 months after pretty much everyone decided to stick with their existing watches.
Fast forward to the turn of the century, and a couple of Swiss visionaries had a crazy idea for a new way of thinking about time. The year was 1998. The internet was on the rise and globalization in full force. More than ever, people were working across borders and across time zones. You know time zones—those fake bands of standardized time invented by railroad companies? They make it annoying as heck to schedule a meeting across the country, across the pond, or across the world. Which 9 A.M. did you mean? Why did Tim schedule a meeting during my lunch? So on, so forth.
Swatch—the watchmaker best known for their casual plastic watches—knew that this problem would only get worse as the internet developed and the world population became more intertwined. So, like the railroad companies of old, they created a solution.
Swatch Internet Time—or .beat time, if you prefer the generic brand—divides the day into 1000 equal parts, called .beats. Yes, that’s “dot beats.” As in, “dot com.” And you note time with an “@” symbol just like email—as in, the meeting is @625.beats (“at 625 dot beats”). It’s not decimal time, it’s internet time, baby.
A Swatch MOON OR.BEAT III wristwatch.
A single .beat is 86.4 standard seconds long, so just under a standard minute and a half. There are no beat hours or beat seconds—though some implementations include “centibeats,” or 1/100th of a beat—no Daylight Savings Time, and, most importantly, no time zones. No matter where you are in the world, we march to the .beat of the same clock.
Unlike the French government, Swatch could introduce a ton of watches featuring decimal time to the masses. But .beat time wasn’t just limited to a few cheap wristwatches. Internet Time made it onto CNN, was implemented by the instant messaging app ICQ, and was even used as the time system in Phantasy Star Online, a groundbreaking online RPG.
But, just like the French back in the late 1700s, the world just wasn’t ready for decimal time. It never caught on, and within a few years, Swatch Internet Time was a mostly forgotten oddity. While it solves the problem of communicating about time zones by completely abolishing them, it makes it a lot harder to actually communicate about time. The internet clock resets at the same time for everyone—midnight in UTC+1, the time zone where Swatch’s headquarters in Biel, Switzerland is located, natch—but for everyone outside of that time zone, .beats just don’t line up with your actual day. While 11 P.M. means late night vibes around the world, the same can’t be said for @166.beats.
Swatch was on to something, though. They saw an interconnected future where people would need an easier way to communicate about time—something universal, divorced from local context. I don’t think we’ve come any closer to cracking that. Internet Time might not be a perfect solution, but the next time you’re trying to plan a meeting with someone on the other side of the globe, think of .beats and the world that could’ve been.
Want to keep Internet Time? While Swatch no longer sells watches with .beat displays, thanks to the magic of smartphones and smartwatches, it’s never been easier to keep Internet Time. I use a great app called BeatTime that works on pretty much every Apple device—you can set a lock screen widget on your phone so checking Internet Time is just a tap away. I can’t personally attest to the quality of this Android widget, but it looks to achieve the same effect. Of course, you can also do it all in your head—just multiply the current hour in UTC+1 by 3600, add that to the current minute in UTC+1 multiplied by 60, then take that number and divide it by 86.4. Round down the result, and you’ve got .beats.
Thème précédent
Premier 
