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In the United States, NASA uses military time down to thousandths of a second. While the U.S. military and militaries around the world use military time, so do other large operators whose business takes them through different time zones. Military time is used to prevent confusion between a.m. If you were to arrange to meet a friend at 8, how would your friend know whether you meant 8 a.m. With military time, no confusion exists because 0800 is 8 a.m. Anything between 1201 and 2359 is basically “p.m.” time. The “p.m.” hours usually give people more trouble, but always remember that 1300 (said “thirteen-hundred”) converts into 1 p.m. Therefore, 1400 converts into 2 p.m., 1500 converts into 3 p.m., and so on and so on. Of course, what they’re really doing is using the 24-hour clock, the world’s most widely used time format. In military time, this is done by using the word “hundred,” followed by “hours.” You never say “thousand,” even for times like 1000 (ten o’clock). The real fun starts after 12 noon when the 12-hour system jumps all the way back to 1 while the 24-hour system just keeps counting upward. In other words, for the period from 1 pm to 12 am, you have to subtract 12 to convert to the 12-hour format. The beautiful thing about military time is that it’s both concise and precise. With just four numbers and one letter, you can pinpoint an exact moment in time and even specify the time zone. Our normal everyday clocks are 12 hour clocks and that’s why we use am & pm. Time stamps referencing Greenwich Mean Time (GMT for short – often interchanged with Coordinated Universal Time/UTC) is denoted by a “Z” at the end, and is written as 0752Z. The local time is denoted by a “J” at the end, and the eastern time zone is denoted by an “R” at the end. Each of the zones have a corresponding letter and name.
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