minutes,” or even “eighty-three minutes thirty-three seconds.” As with duodecimal time, decimal time was represented according to true solar time, rather than mean time, with noon being marked when the sun reached its highest point locally, which varied at different locations, and throughout the year. In "Methods to find the Leap Years of the French Calendar," Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre used three different representations for the same decimal time: 0,386 (comma is the decimal sign in French) 0j386 ("j" is for jour, day in French) 3h 86' (apostrophe is for minutes) Sometimes in official records, decimal hours were divided into tenths, or décimes, instead of minutes. One décime is equal to 10 decimal minutes, which is nearly equal to a quarter-hour (15 minutes) in standard time. Thus, "five hours two décimes" equals 5.2 decimal hours, roughly 12:30 p.m. in standard time. Usage Although clocks and watches were produced with faces showing both standard time with numbers 1–24 and decimal time with numbers 1–10, decimal time never caught on; it was not used for public records until the beginning of the Republican year III, 22 September 1794, and mandatory use was suspended 7 April 1795 (18 Germinal of the Year III). In spite of this, decimal time was used in many cities, including Marseille and Toulouse, where a decimal clock with just an hour hand was on the front of the Capitole for five years. In some places, decimal time was used to record certificates of births, marriages, and deaths until August,1800. On the Palace of the Tuileries in Paris, two of the four clock faces displayed decimal time until at least 1801. The mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace had a decimal watch made for him, and used decimal time in his work, in the form of fractional days. Decimal time was part of a larger attempt at decimalisation in revolutionary France (which also included decimalisation of currency and metrication) and was introduced as part of the French Republican Calendar, which, in addition to decimally dividing the day, divided the month into three décades of 10 days each; this calendar was abolished at the end of 1805. The start of each year was determined according to the day of the autumnal equinox, in relation to true or apparent solar time at the Paris Observatory. Metric System In designing the new metric system, the intent was to replace all the various units of different