In 1793, at the height of the French Revolution, the National Convention decided that time too would be decimal. The day would have 10 hours, each hour 100 minutes and each minute 100 seconds. Clockmakers made new dials, some with both scales side by side so that people would get used to them. A paper dial presented by the clockmaker Hanin to the National Convention, with the new hours in Arabic numerals and the old ones in Roman numerals, for comparison: “relation of the new hours to the old, adopted by the National Convention”.Hanin · Wikimedia Commons · public domain Decimal time became compulsory at the end of 1794 and was suspended in April 1795, seventeen months after it was decreed. Nobody wanted to change their household clock, church clocks went on striking twelve, and the new time had no practical advantage to make up for the bother. The Republican calendar, with months of 30 days divided into three “decades” of 10, lasted a little longer: Napoleon abolished it at the start of 1806.