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Last night I was watching The Pale Blue Eye (2022), a (bad) period piece set at West Point in the year 1830. At the 21m50s mark, Captain Hitchcock (Simon McBurney) snaps at a cadet:

Effective oh-six-hundred tomorrow morning, all men will only attend class, meals, prayer services. Nothing more!

This struck me as an anachronism: I would have expected that "military time" came into use only in the age of radio and other voice-or-print telecommunications, where "8 AM" could get garbled into "8 PM" more easily than "0800" into "2000". I wouldn't have expected military time to be in use at all pre-WWI, let alone pre-Civil-War.

A cursory Google search supports that intuition. In fact there's a meme going around that says very precisely "The U.S. Army didn't officially adopt military time until 1942" — but I have no idea what the meme-maker meant by that. (Was that the date of some sort of proclamation that "from now on thou shalt always talk in hundreds"? For how long before that "official adoption," if any, was military time already in common use by ordinary soldiers and officers?)

So I'm looking for some more rigorous analysis. This is going to be tricky, since we're talking about oral language in the days before film; but maybe a military historian will know: When did the U.S. Army adopt the "oh-six-hundred" manner of speaking?

Quuxplusone
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    Also, someone in the movie said "OK", which arose around 1838, while Poe would have been of US Military Academy age in 1827-31. And did the actor (the former Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films) have a gentle Virginia accent? – Amorphous Blob Jan 23 '23 at 18:22
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    @AmorphousBlob Was that a Virginia accent? As a non-US person, I could only tell that it was different from everybody else's accent. And also really, really cute. Why do you so seldom hear these lovely accents in films? – RedSonja Jan 24 '23 at 14:03
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    @AmorphousBlob Meh, lexicographers don't find the first usage ever all the time – Azor Ahai -him- Jan 24 '23 at 15:04
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    A "(bad) period piece" has an anachronism? How unusual ! ....actually I checked IMDB which claims it had a budget of $72M USD, so it was a well-funded production and likely had fact checking done, they just missed this one. You should add a goof to IMDB, and link it back to this post too. – Criggie Jan 24 '23 at 22:47
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    @RedSonja, I'm definitely no expert, it just seemed vaguely but not excessively Southern to me. (Although these days, anywhere in the US a lot of people speak with a "standard" Midwestern-ish accent.) Interesting question about films... I suspect that file makers use noticeable accents to help paint a picture of the character - Daniel Craig's southern accent in the Knives Out and Glass Onion films, hard-boiled New York or Chicago cops, LA guys from the hood. – Amorphous Blob Jan 25 '23 at 15:08
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    @AmorphousBlob: Ha, you had me fooled! I assumed you were a connoisseur criticizing the use of a Virginia accent by a character primarily associated with Baltimore! (I'm from Maryland and can tell you that northern Maryland is much more Southern than southern Maryland ;) so I saw nothing unusual in it.) But in fact, Wikipedia tells me that Poe was raised in Richmond. See also https://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poeapprn.htm : "[Poe] spoke with a slight Southern drawl. He rhymed sister and vista, ha‘nted and enchanted..." – Quuxplusone Jan 25 '23 at 15:19
  • "Sister" rhymes with "vista", of course it does. – RedSonja Jan 26 '23 at 08:39
  • The problem isn't so much what year, but that he said "oh six hundred". "Oh" is the letter between "en" and "pee". "Zero" is a number. That should have been "zero six hundred". We'll ignore the redundancy of saying "zero six hundred tomorrow morning". "zero six" is, by definition, in the morning. ;) – FreeMan Jan 26 '23 at 14:12
  • @Quuxplusone - interesting, thanks for the info! – Amorphous Blob Jan 26 '23 at 16:19

2 Answers2

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The US military did not use the 24-hour clock system at the time depicted in that movie (emphasis mine).

During World War I, the British Royal Navy adopted the 24-hour clock in 1915, and the Allied armed forces followed soon after,[22] with the British Army switching officially in 1918.[24] The Canadian armed forces first started to use the 24-hour clock in late 1917.[25] In 1920, the United States Navy was the first United States organization to adopt the system; the United States Army, however, did not officially adopt the 24-hour clock until World War II, on July 1, 1942.[26]

I haven't located the original order yet, but did find mention of a training circular put out within a month, from a US Army publication from 1942. See circular #51, first on the list:

enter image description here

Another US Government document, labelled Information Digest, published on 17 June 1942 posts notice of when the US Army will start using the 24-hr clock (center paragraph): enter image description here

This confirms July 1st as starting date for the official use of the 'military time' system, for all

Official messages, dispatches, orders and reports...

How early did others adopt this system?

The above linked Wikipedia article mentions that the 24-hour clock was adopted in organizations within other nations as early as the late 19th century (Italy in 1893). None are listed as early as the 1830s:

A report by a government committee in the United Kingdom noted Italy as the first country among those mentioned to adopt 24-hour time nationally, in 1893.[22] Other European countries followed: France adopted it in 1912 (the French army in 1909), followed by Denmark (1916), and Greece (1917). By 1920, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Switzerland had switched, followed by Turkey (1925), and Germany (1927). By the early 1920s, many countries in Latin America had also adopted the 24-hour clock.[23] Some of the railways in India had switched before the outbreak of the war.[22]

Glorfindel
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justCal
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  • At the time of my writing, the Wikipedia article was just parroting the meme. I found two NewspaperArchive stories from 1942 that confirm some War Department directive went into effect at 10pm on 1942-07-01 (and updated Wikipedia)... but what's the status quo ante? The Brownsville Herald of 1942-06-26 says explicitly, "officers at Moore Field have used the 24-hour clock system for some time. However, its use in official business messages will be an innovation." – Quuxplusone Jan 23 '23 at 16:51
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    "for some time" seems a very imprecise term Moore field was only opened 20 sep 1941, so for some time is less then a year. Moore field, being an air base, and with expected requirements to interface with naval aviation forces may have used/taught the 24-hr clock before other units. Note in the answer the Navy switched in 1920. – justCal Jan 23 '23 at 17:28
  • The second quote from Wikipedia references a Britisch parliamentary report that very imprecisely lists "countries" implementing the 24-hour clock. Later in the text, it turns out that for Italy, it was actually the Italian Railways, while in France it was the army introducing the scheme. The report also notes that it was readily adopted in a lot of other aspects of public life in these countries within a short period of time, but it is clearly overstating the facts to talk about "nations adopting the 24-hour clock". – ccprog Jan 23 '23 at 18:49
  • See also: world war two - Where does the name 'D-Day' come from? - History Stack Exchange where it is clear that in 1922/23 the 24 hour clock was not in use (definition H Hour) – Mark Johnson Jan 23 '23 at 19:40
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    You can use a 24-hour clock without saying "oh-x-hundred". Most of Europe does. There are no O's in numbers. Therefore, I see this as being only a partial answer to the question, as it does not address when this unique "oh-x-hundred" pattern of speech became popular in the US military. – Cody Gray - on strike Jan 24 '23 at 08:03
  • Telegraph instructions I've seen charged each digit as a word, and PM as a word unless spelled P.M. (four words). So the 06 pronunciation probably is not associated with telegraph services. – david Jan 24 '23 at 10:20
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    For those who are curious, like I was: "EWT" in the second screenshot stands for "Eastern War Time", which was the name used for Daylight Savings Time during WWII. – Michael Seifert Jan 24 '23 at 15:39
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    For comparison, a BBC World Service announcer would pronounce 1930 "Nineteen Hours thirty minutes" or "Nineteen thirty". Why in the US military do they say "nineteen hundred thirty hours"? Note that the word "hundred" does not actually mean 100. It seems to be used as a separator. What is the origin of this military jargon? – David42 Jan 24 '23 at 17:30
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    @David42 Hundred is used instead of zero-zero. To avoid misunderstanding for a garbled transmission: 0616 = zero-six-sixteen. Without the zero, 'six[garbled]' it would not be clear if sixteen-something or six-something was meant. The BBC used the civilian form of the 24 hour clock system. – Mark Johnson Jan 24 '23 at 17:47
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    @Mark Johnson Your explanation of the reason for the practice seems plausible. I chimed in because most Americans associate 24-hour time only with the military and are unaware of the civilian form. If so, they may not understand the second part of the question. I would like to hear about documentary evidence for early uses of the "hundred hours" pronunciation. – David42 Jan 24 '23 at 18:36
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    @David42 Maybe that may still turn up (military schoolbooks). 1600 as sixteen-hundred is not only a valid number, but also shorter. – Mark Johnson Jan 24 '23 at 18:56
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    @MarkJohnson Not sure about the other branches of service, but in the US Army, one would never say 'sixteen.' All times, map coordinates, etc. were always numbered out by singular digits. 0616 would be: zero-six-one-six. Source? Myself - my MOS: 31K, Combat Signaller, '87-'93. Trained at Fort Gordon, GA. [ I set up, used and managed wired phones, switchboards and FM radios. ] – zmerch Jan 26 '23 at 20:34
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My grandfathers were both in wars. One in the Korean War, one in WW2. I was in Iraq and Afghanistan. None of us have ever said Oh-x-hour. It's always been zero. Like zero-6 hundred. It was used in WW1 from what I know, but wasn't made official until the 1940s. There's a movie called Zero Dark Thirty, not Oh Dark Thirty because no one says Oh Dark.

KillingTime
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Smahsville
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    You imply, but don't state explicitly, that you and your grandfathers are American. As a counterexample, "Oh" is the norm in civil use in the UK, including among friends with a military background (though not in a military setting). Note that we use 24 hour clock more than in the US. – Chris H Jan 24 '23 at 13:59
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    In US service 0 is always stated as "zero" and O is stated as 'Oh" or in the phonetic alphabet, "oscar" to strictly differentiate. If, for example, one is reading off a telephone number, e.g. 555-0009, it is read "five-five-five-zero-zero-zero-niner". This carries over into NATO usage as well, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet. – R Leonard Jan 24 '23 at 15:41
  • Just as bad is some saying "fiver" instead of "five". – R Leonard Jan 24 '23 at 15:49
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    FWIW, the Internet tells me that both "zero-six-hundred" and "oh-six-hundred" are in common colloquial/oral use, but that you're right "zero-six-hundred" would be the more "correct" form. The (unofficial?) use of "zero dark" (rather than "zero-zero hundred" or "oh-oh hundred") for "midnight" seems to be an additional epicycle on top of that. None of this explains when the "whatever-x-hundred" convention started, though. – Quuxplusone Jan 24 '23 at 15:55
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    Do you have any sources for the use of the "hundred hours" pronunciation in World War I? Are there any training materials from World War II which describe this pronunciation? – David42 Jan 24 '23 at 18:41
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    Not sure how it is said now, but in the past, whereas the US Army might say ". . . at 0400 hours . . ." the US Navy would say ". . . at 0400 . . ." Once asked my father, a retired RADM with 33 years commissioned service why that was and he said to the effect that the Navy presumed when talking time that one could figure out "hours" all by themselves. – R Leonard Jan 24 '23 at 21:00
  • @RLeonard The formulation "This carries over into NATO usage as well" is quite peculiar when the linked article states that NATO adopted the alphabet being prepared for ICAO. Arguably, that it is being used by ICAO is most important for most of the world as not all countries are in NATO and the civilian aviation sector is much bigger. Notably, the numbers were already fixed in 1947, before NATO even existed. – Vladimir F Героям слава Jan 26 '23 at 17:31
  • "Oh" is a big no-no in the Artillery or the U.S. Marine Corps. At the Fort Sill Artillery school, specifically Field Artillery Officer's Basic Course, if you said "oh" for any zero, someone in the class would shout "Bingo" and you'd owe the class money. At the time I went through, each "Bingo" was 10c, unless we bingo'd the instructor (a Captain); then they would owe $0.25. I'm sure inflation has changed this. We had a party with the money at the end of the class. – J. Gwinner Jan 30 '23 at 00:08