Why Military Time?
24 hr time prevents ambiguity
Military time uses a 24 hour clock to denote the 24 hours in the day. This means there are no duplicate hours in the day, and no need to specify whether “5 o’clock” means morning or evening. In Army time, 5 o’clock (otherwise known as oh five hundred in Army speak) always means the crack of dawn. The dinner hour or five in the evening would be called seventeen hundred hours and written as 1700.
Read moreHow to Calculate :
After noon, add 12, and you’ve got military time!
Military time operates on a 24 hour clock, which begins at midnight, or 0, and counts the passing hours up to 24, or the next midnight. An easy rule of thumb in order to convert to Army time is to just remember to add 12 to any time after noon. So 1 PM would become 1300, 2 would become 1400, and so on. Converting to 24 hr time is easy, but converting back to 12 hr time can be a bit trickier, because you have to subtract in your head! That’s when a chart or conversion tool can really come in handy.
Read moreWhy Should Civilians Care About the 24 Hour Clock?
The 24 hour clock has plenty of applications besides Army time.
24 hr time is actually the most commonly used time system in the world. America, Canada, and a few other nations are virtually the only countries to use the 12 hr clock at all. Even in these countries, many specialized fields rely on the 24 hour clock because it eliminates the potential for doubt or ambiguity. For example, doctors and nurses use this time system to record events in patients’ medical histories, and aviation professionals use it to calculate flight plans. A time-related mistake in either of these fields could be deadly. Logistics experts, meteorologists, astronomers, computer coders, and emergency response teams also use military time.
