Swatch Internet Time was an attempt by the Swatch company to create a new time scale, to be used internationally. It divided the day into 1000 beats of 86.4 seconds each.
There were no time zones; insetad, the new scale of Biel Mean Time (BMT) would be used named after the company's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland. Despite the name, Biel Mean Time did not refer to mean solar time at the meridian of Biel, but rather was equivalent to Central European Standard Time, i.e., UTC+1.
The most distinctive aspect of Swatch Internet Time was its new notation; as an example, "@248" would indicate a time 248 beats after midnight, equivalent to 4:57:07.2 UTC. The benefits of this notation were not explained. No notation was provided for dates.
The proposal timescale was announced October 23, 1998, in a ceremony marked by the presence of Nicolas G. Hayek, President and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, President of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of the MIT Media Lab.
During 1999, Swatch produced several models of watch that displayed Swatch Internet Time as well as conventional time, and convinced a few web sites to use the new format.
