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The world unique time

Two things are important in an appointment for all participants: when & where? Nowadays, the "where" can be a real location (e.g. "Berlin, Alexanderplatz") or a conference call, a video conference, a chat room, a computer game and much more. All location terms are mostly unambiguous and understandable worldwide.

... Image By Markus Fleschutz 🕓 April 27, 2019

At the "When " it is so far unfortunately less clear and understandable: you give only the local time in the regional notation. For example, at 10:20, the time zone is missing and people in the English-speaking world miss the indication "AM" or "PM". When determining the time zone, on the other hand, you always need the location and the date (for winter or summer time). Furthermore, with analog clocks, you can't tell whether it's morning or afternoon.

But with only two small steps one could make the time indication worldwide unambiguous:

1️⃣ The 24-hour Format

The 12-hour format with "AM" and "PM" is not clear especially at midnight and noon (0:00 AM or 0:00 PM? 12:00 AM or 12:00 PM?) and needs then an addition. In contrast, the 24-hour format is always unambiguous (0:00 to 23:59) and also more space-saving.

2️⃣ The Time Zone Character

Our earth is generally divided into 24 time zones, whereby a time zone comprises 15 degrees of longitude (24 × 15° = 360°). For each of these time zones, an abbreviation is now assigned as follows:

This results in the following time zone abbreviations:

For example, in summer time you live in time zone M and in winter time in time zone L. An advantage of the time zone abbreviation is that you can easily determine time zone differences: 'time zone D - time zone A = 4 - 1 = 3 hours difference'. The time zone abbreviation is simply appended to the 24-hour clock time and the time is unique worldwide.

Possibilities of the time indication

Examples