Hexadecimal time
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The hexadecimal time format divides the day into either 16 or 32 hexadecimal hours.
In either case there are 256 hexadecimal minutes in a hexadecimal hour and 16 hexadecimal seconds in a hexadecimal minute.
[edit] The sixteen hours a day format
The hexadecimal 16H/day time format was first proposed by the Swedish-American engineer John W. Nystrom in 1863.
In 1997, the American Mark Vincent Rogers of Intuitor, unaware of Nystrom's system, proposed a similar system of hexadecimal time and implemented it in JavaScript as the Hexclock. Mr Rogers’s proposal uses the hexadecimal digit system of 0-9 and A-F. A day is unity, or 1, and any fraction thereof can be shown with digits to the right of the hexadecimal point. Example: Noon = 0.80000 (hex)day.
Since the time divisions are all powers of sixteen, this can also be parsed by taking the first digit to the right of the point as the hexhour, the next two as the hexminutes and the fourth as the hexseconds.
The conversion from hexclock units of time is as follows:
| 1 hexhour | = | 675 s | × | 8 | = | 1 H 30 | |
| 1 hexminute | = | 675 s | ÷ | 32 | ≥ | 21.09 s | |
| 1 hexsecond | = | 675 s | ÷ | 512 | ≤ | 1.32 s |
Intuitor-hextime may also be formatted with an underscore separating the hexhours and hexminutes. For example, 12:00 noon, being the halfway point of the day, would be 8_00, and 8_40 would denote 12:15pm.
