Starting at some agreed upon auspicious occasion in order to acheive catalytic buy-in, clocks should be reset so that dawn is 12 and dusk is 12, approximately.

Also an app that tells time for your own personal time zone. So distributed time zones.
-- JesusHChrist, May 22 2015

How would it work during the summer or winter, when days and nights are respectively longer than the other?
-- 21 Quest, May 22 2015


Obviously, it would be necessary to travel (at times, quite fast) to keep in sync with the clock.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 22 2015


The appropriate date to do this, and to check it every 6 months, to make sure the clocks are still synchronized with the day, is an Equinox.
-- Vernon, May 22 2015


It would be quite good to have a radiation meter that works through the earth. This would give a nice daily curve that could be used as a temporal position.
-- wjt, May 22 2015


As [Vernon] says, set it at the equinox, then adjust time proportionally with seasonal changes. An hour in summer is longer in the day than at night. What could go wrong?
-- tatterdemalion, May 23 2015


This is called "unequal hours" and was common in pre-industrial societies.
-- pocmloc, May 23 2015


{ I have this nasty sneaking suspicion that in pre-Meiji times Japan had a 12 hour clock;

It was re-set every once in a while to work out at 6 hours from dusk to dusk and another 6 hours dusk to dawn; }
-- not_morrison_rm, May 23 2015


// reset so that dawn is 12 and dusk is 12//
sp"reset so that sunrise is 0 and sunset is 0"

You also need a negative o'clock so 1 hr before sunrise is -1:00SR.

Things could get complicated at the poles.
-- FlyingToaster, May 23 2015


The length of an hour would be different depending not only on the time of year, but whether it was day or night (as also mentioned by [tatterdemalion]), and inside the Arctic or Antarctic circles, things would be completely screwed. And time-zones wouldn't work particularly well, so back to everywhere having their own time, which would (of course) have to change as you travelled (anywhere). So your timepiece would have to know exactly where you are and where the sun is, at all times.
In other words, an idea perfectly suited to the hafbakery!
-- neutrinos_shadow, May 24 2015


Might as well put the iWatch to use: everybody can have their own time; the watches translate.
-- FlyingToaster, May 24 2015



random, halfbakery