Why is it that Americans refer to 24 hour time as military time? I understand that the military uses the 24hr format but I don’t understand why the general public would refer to it like that?
It makes it seem like it’s a foreign concept where as in a lot of countries it’s the norm.
Here in California, I’ve heard both “military time” and “24 hour time” used interchangeably for writing the time as “03:45” or “16:20”. That said, I’ve heard – citation needed – that proper military time does not use the colon, such as “1600”, pronounced as “sixteen hundred hours”.
As for why the public might refer to this generally as “military time”, it may just be that that’s the most common, well-known use-case in the States, outside of the sciences. I personally use 24 hour time on all my devices, but I’ve come across many people who prefer clockfaces or AM/PM, probably out of habit.
By the book, you’re right. No colon when written, and if the last two digits aren’t “00” they are supposed to be pronounced individually.
4:45pm = 1645 = “Sixteen Four Five hours”. (Or “Fooor fife” if you’re a pedant about radios.)
That’s all well and good trivia, in practice it’s usually said “Sixteen forty five” because yeah ain’t nobody got time for all that.
As a fairly-new ham radio operator, I need to improve my numbers pronunciation so maybe I’ll start reading the time like that and see how other people react.
Already, I get a number of confused-then-resigned looks when saying “sixteen o’clock” haha
I’ve heard the same with regards to proper military time not having the colon.
In Switzerland it works like that too.
“Normal time” for us is 24h with colon so 18:00
While “Military time” is without colon, so 1800 and is then pronounced as achtzehnhundert (eighteen hundred).
We don’t use colons in our time in the American hospital system. We use them for a lot of other things though. (Pun)
It took me a second to realise what the pun was…