How did the French Revolution impact the French calendar and timekeeping?

The French Revolution was a period of significant political and social upheaval in France, and it had a major impact on many aspects of French life, including the calendar and timekeeping.

The revolutionaries sought to create a new, secular calendar that would symbolize the break with the old regime. They abolished the traditional Gregorian calendar and introduced a new calendar, known as the French Republican calendar, in 1793. The new calendar had 12 months, each with 30 days, and an additional five or six days at the end of the year, known as the 'complementary days'. The months were named after the natural world and the changing seasons, rather than religious or royal figures.

The French Revolutionary calendar was also decimalized, with each month divided into three 'decades' of ten days each. This was intended to further break with the old, religious calendar and its association with the seven-day week.

The French Revolution also had an impact on timekeeping. The revolutionaries sought to establish a new system of time measurement that would be based on rational, scientific principles. They introduced the 'decimal time' system, in which the day was divided into 10 hours, each hour into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. This system never really caught on, but it did inspire other attempts to reform timekeeping, including the establishment of the metric system.