French Republican Calendar

This is an NPM Package that you can pass a Gregorian Calendar date or Standard time and get the equivalent date/time according to the Republican Calendar and it’s associated Decimal time.

One of my favorite peices of media is the Revolutions Podcast by Mike Duncan subscribe here and particlularly season 3 about the French Revolution. Liberty, Egalite, Fraternite…. also guillotines, betrayal and horrific crimes against humanity but the thing that interested me the most was that they were not just revolting against the government but against how the entire world was set up. One of the things they set out to do, was divise a brand new calendar and clock system to divorce themselves from all Religious and Royal oversight and history. It was called the Republican Calendar and Decimal time. It’s also sometimes called the “French Revolution Calendar”. This came alongside the idea of Metrication (the move to the Metric System for measurements) and Decimalization of money.

Now as you might imagine, the Republican Calendar didn’t quite stand the test of time that Metric and Decimalized money has, but to me, that is what makes it even more fascinating.

Republican Calendar

The basic idea is:

10 days in a week
3 weeks in a month
12 months in a year

Now you might be doing the math:

Month: 10 days * 3 weeks = 30 days/month

Year: 30 days * 12 months =/= 365 days/year

Where did those 5 extra days go?

Well, those are called “Complementary days” or in French les jours complémentaires

They were to be a 5 day string of National Holidays at the end of the year (6 of Leap Years)

Celebration of Virtue
Celebration of Talent
Celebration of Labour
Celebration of Convictions
Celebration of Awards
Celebration of the Revolution (Leap years)

It was quite odd when compared to our everyday experiences but I think there is something cool about the calendar. The structure, the consistent months, how you know that day 1st, 11th, 21st are always the first of the week and the 10th, 20th and 30th are always the last of the week. Plus it makes sense, if you are changing units of measurement and the monetary standards, why not change everything all at once. Unify it all and rip off the bandaid rather than, maybe, eventually getting to it.

If you’re going to be a revolution, be a revolution in all aspects.

So that leads us to the other part I mentioned. They decimalized the money and the calendar, now there is the issue of time.

Decimal Time

60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day. Thats what we are used to. What could you do to shake this up?

How about 100 seconds in a minute, 100 minutes in an hour and 10 hours in a day.

Again, looking at the math:

SI Time: 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours = 86,400 seconds/day

Decimal Time: 100 seconds * 100 minutes * 10 hours = 100,000 seconds/day

Yep, you’re reading that right if you notice they have shortened the length of a second. So a decimal second is equivalent to .864 of a regular second. It’s wild but I just love the ridiculousness of the idea.

So yes. This time will convert from regular 24 hour time to 10 hour decimal time as well.

So tell us, Why?

Why? Because I could, or rather, wanted to see if I could and it turns out I could. Honestly, it doesn’t have too much of a purpose except for some fun and a bit of a learning experience.

I want to extend my experience and make a little phone app that would display the date and time. That is still on the horizon. I am just not sure about what the best way to go about this right now. It’s a future goal and you will see an update here when it does happen.

If you like the idea of the French Republican Caledar, feel free to give me a star :star2: or install the package yourself :)