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0 pointsxyzelement3y ago0 comments

It's a fun fact that the reason for this was for preparation for the introduction of a metric minute composed of 100 seconds that was mandated by the government in the 1960s just as the first digital controls for home appliances were being introduced.

If I recall correctly - 60 imperial seconds are equivalent to 100 metric seconds a sort of inverse to the 100 kph being equivalent to 60 mph (metric units were mandated on American speedometers at the same time)

Of course on the speedometer you can just display both units where as on the microwave entry it's more the intention of the user that drives interpretation. So they got stuck at 100=60 and since everyone just interpreted 100 metric seconds as 1:00, minute it never caught on but never went away either.

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causi3y ago

This sounds like complete nonsense and I can't find any evidence of such a "mandated by the government metric time" with Google.

gpderetta3y ago

I think "imperial second" kind of gives it away.

dragonwriter3y ago

> It's a fun fact that the reason for this was for preparation for the introduction of a metric minute composed of 100 seconds that was mandated by the government in the 1960s [...] (metric units were mandated on American speedometers at the same time)

The Metric Conversion Act was in 1975, not the 1960s, and I am fairly sure that a decimalized minute was never part of any plans for US metrication anyhow.

This seems like an urban legend where the more likely reason is that its a practical design to treat the last two digits as seconds abd everything before as minutes, irrespective of whether the last two digits are greater than one minute, when making a keypad entry system. It bith does what is likely intended and avoids needing validation/error reporting since every possible numerical entry becomes correct.

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