Swatch Internet Time

Swatch Internet Time (or .beat time) is a decimal time system introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of their marketing campaign for their line of ".beat" watches. Those without a watch can use the Internet to view the current time,^[1] originally on the watchmaker's website. The concept is similar to decimal minutes in French Revolutionary decimal time.^[2]

Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided into 1,000 parts called .beats. Each .beat lasts 86.4 seconds (1.440 minutes) in standard time. The time of day begins at midnight, for example, @248 BEATS would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight, representing 248⁄1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes.

There are no time zones in Swatch Internet Time; it is globally based on the time zone of Biel, Switzerland, where Swatch's headquarters is located, what is conventionally known as Central European Time (UTC+1 or West Africa Time). Swatch calls this "Biel Mean Time" (BMT), although it is not actually mean solar time as measured in Biel. And, 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]

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