Reviving the Global .Beat
The year was 1998
The dotcom bubble was in full swing, Swatch was celebrating its fifteenth birthday, and they’d just introduced a novel concept to the world which aimed to redefine the way we perceive and measure time for the new millennium.
Swatch Internet Time
The long forgotten Swatch Internet Time was poised to change the way we arranged time online with each other.
We all know trying to work with time zones suck. So rather than bullshit around with online converters, the smart boffins at Swatch devised a way for us to meet without needing the mental gymnastics to figure it all out.
And they called this…
.BEAT TIME
The way it worked was that each day was broken up into increments of 1000 ‘.Beats’, each single .Beat was the equivalent of 1 Minute 26.4 Seconds, but you didn’t have to remember that because .Beat time was the same no matter where on the Earth you’re located.
And the novel, more linguistic way you write .Beat time is with the @ symbol before a 3 digit number, from @000 to @999
