12 noon

Can some one explain to me how 12 noon, 1200 hrs, can be called 12 PM?
Post Meridiem (?) would start immediately after 12 noon To me 12 PM should be
Midnight 2400 hrs? 12 AM should be noon?
Are the media fearmongers (weathermen) right or me? ( I’ve been wrong before!!)

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s start with anyone with “Chief” in their moniker admitting to being wrong… :rofl: :rofl:

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A couple times in 40 years, and I was arguing with another Chief, and once was with my wife

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Google says:

From a dissimilation of earlier *medīdiēs, derived from medius (" middle ") + diēs (“day”).

How would one get midnight from it? We know the Mediterranean Sea - medi middle and diem - seize the day - carpe diem.

Well, if you’re arguing with your wife, you’re just wrong, no matter how right you are.

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I reread you question, you’re asking about the ambiguity wrt labeling midnight and noon.

No logic to it, just convention.

Actually my question is this.12 noon should be 12 AM? The split second after that is PM, e.g. 1201 PM. 12 o’clock is the last second of the morning. What say you all?

I think Heiwa would have a great explanation for you.

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Midnight is from medius nocte, and various corruptions thru the years.

11:59:59 is the last second of the before noon, 23:59:59 is the last second of the after noon.

1200 and 2400 are either noon or midnight, you can tell by looking outside, if it’s dark it’s probably night time unless you are near an erupting volcano.

AM is the catch all for after midnight but before afternoon, PM is the catch all for afternoon but before midnight. I hope this is not a new concept for you. If it is, contact Heiwa for details about the conspiracy behind the numbers on our clocks.

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Yes, I missed that somehow. Isn’t it 100% arbitrary? Someone had to pick one at random so we just roll with it.

All my digital stuff is set on 24 hour time.

That actually sounds reasonable. The daylight thing is sometimes hard in the Arctic tho. The portholes never worked in my eng/rms anyway.

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That must have made it difficult to make the noon reports.

Perhaps one could argue that 12:00 is thought of as an interval and not a point in time. In the interval between 12:00 and 12:01 a digital clock displays “12:00”.

Even on a typical analog clock the second hand remains on 12:00:00 until 12:00:01

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Well, did this century start on 01 Jan 2000, or a year later on 01 Jan 2001?

Certainly the latter, unless there was a year “zero” at the beginning.

And PM should start after 1200.

01 Jan 2001 nd PM should start after 1200 hrs. Ye-e-s-s

Why can’t 12 noon just be 1200 and 12 hours later the time will be 2400?
[ I’ll probably regret asking that]

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Or just noon and midnight if you don’t want to use 24 hour “military” time?

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The standard ISO 8601-1:2019 midnight is only referred to as 00:00 which corresponds with the beginning of the calendar day. Use of 24:00 is disallowed.

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Noon and midnight or the 24hr clock are fine with real people. Its just media weathermen that don’t get it and of course they influence the “unwashed”