Boniface Collignon proposed dividing the day into 10 hours or 1,000 minutes, each new hour into 100 minutes, each new minute into 1,000 seconds, and each new second into 1,000 tierces (older French for "third"). The distance the twilight zone travels in one such tierce at the equator, which would be one-billionth of the circumference of the earth, would be a new unit of length, provisionally called a half-handbreadth, equal to four modern centimetres. Further, the new tierce would be divided into 1,000 quatierces, which he called "microscopic points of time". He also suggested a week of 10 days and dividing the year into 10 "solar months". French Republic Decimal time was officially introduced during the French Revolution. Jean-Charles de Borda made a proposal for decimal time on 5 November 1792. The National Convention issued a decree on 5 October 1793, to which the underlined words were added on 24 November 1793 (4 Frimaire of the Year II): VIII. Each month is divided into three equal parts, of ten days each, which are called décades... XI. The day, from midnight to midnight, is divided into ten parts or hours, each part into ten others, so on until the smallest measurable portion of the duration. The hundredth part of the hour is called decimal minute; the hundredth part of the minute is called decimal second. This article will not be required for the public records, until from the 1st of Vendémiaire, the year three of the Republic. (September 22, 1794) (emphasis in original) Thus, midnight was called dix heures ("ten hours"), noon was called cinq heures ("five hours"), etc. Representation The colon (:) was not yet in use as a unit separator for standard times, and is used for non-decimal bases. The French decimal separator is the comma (,), while the period (.), or "point," is used in English. Units were either written out in full, or abbreviated. Thus, five hours eighty three minutes decimal might be written as 5 h. 83 m. Even today, "h" is commonly used is France to separate hours and minutes of 24-hour time, instead of a colon, such as 14h00. Midnight was represented in civil records as “ten hours.” Times between midnight and the first decimal hour were written without hours, so 1:00 am, or 0.41 decimal hours, was written as “four décimes.” or “forty-one minutes.” 2:00 am (0.8333) was written as “eight décimes,” “eighty-three