April 24, 2006
3:41 a.m.
On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 12:14:36AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
I ask because there is a lot of confusion around on this subject. For example, <http://www.physics.nist.gov/News/Releases/questions.html> says that railroads and airlines get around the 12:00 ambiguity by never scheduling departures for either noon or midnight, but I once had a printed airline ticket that said I left LAX at "1200N", meaning noon.
Even worse, I've seen legislative hearings that were scheduled for "12:00 M". The "M" here means... no, not midnight, but meridian --- i.e., noon! I was quite confused about the "midnight meeting" until I was clued in on the "correct" way of reading the notation. --Ken Pizzini