Swatch Internet Time

Those without a watch could use the Internet to view the current time on the watchmaker's website, but now a dedicated wiki serves the purpose.

[2] Instead of hours and minutes, in Swatch Time the mean solar day is divided into 1,000 equal parts called .beats, meaning each .beat lasts 86.4 seconds (1.440 minutes) in standard time, and an hour lasts for approximately 42 .beats.

Hayek, president of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and then director of the MIT Media Lab.

In March 2001, Ericsson released the T20e, a mobile phone which gave the user the option of displaying Internet Time.

While Swatch still offers the concept on its website, it no longer markets Beat watches.

In early 1999, Swatch began a marketing campaign about the launch of their Beatnik satellite, intended to service a set of Internet Time watches.

They were criticized for planning to use an amateur radio frequency for broadcasting a commercial message (an act banned by international treaties).

The satellite was intended to be deployed by hand from the Mir space station.

Swatch instead donated the transmitter batteries for use in normal Mir functions, and the satellite never broadcast.

Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided into 1,000 parts called .beats.