bases with a small number of standard decimal units. This was to include units for length, weight, area, liquid capacity, volume, and money. New decimal units of time were also considered to replace the old duodecimal and sexagesimal units, and the new decimal time units recently introduced. On March 28, 1794, Joseph-Louis Lagrange proposed to the Commission for Republican Weights and Measures on dividing the day into 10 decidays and 100 centidays, which would be expressed together as two digits, counting periods of 14 minutes and 24 seconds since midnight, nearly a quarter hour. This would be displayed by one hand on watches. Another hand would display 100 divisions of a centiday, which is 1/10,000 day, or 8.64 seconds. A third hand on a smaller dial would further divide these into 10, which would be 1/100,000 day, or 864 milliseconds, slightly less than a whole second. He suggested the deciday and centiday be used together to represent the time of day, such as "4 and 5," "4/5," or simply "45." This was refuted by Jean-Marie Viallon, of the Sainte-Geneviève Library in Paris, who thought that decimal hours, equal to 2.4 old hours, were too long, and that 100 centidays were too many, and proposed dividing two halves of the day into 10 new hours each, for a total of 20 per day, and that simply changing the numbers on watch dials from 12 to 10, he thought, would be sufficient for rural people. For others, there would be 50 decimal minutes per decimal hour, and 100 decimal seconds per decimal minute. His new hours, minutes, and seconds would thus be more similar to the old units. C.A. Prieur (of the Côte-d'Or), read at the National Convention on Ventôse 11, year III (March 1, 1795): 1) As it does not offer almost all of the nation any marked advantage, it would only throw a disadvantage on the new system of measures and the decimal method, which is however very useful; 2) Since the hourly compilation is not a commercial object or susceptible to a police regulation, the old uses would be maintained by the immense force of habit; 3) This habit would be further consolidated by the fear of confusion. It would be necessary, to prevent it, to take new names that have not yet been indicated, and that it would be very difficult to introduce into common language, especially for