>Does not suprise me. The French would try to be different.
>
>As for the 24 hour day. It is to my understanding that the 12 hour clock was based on the compass. Becuase nautical navigation is done with the compass and proper time of the day.

While there are some similarities (hours being divided into 60 minutes of 60 seconds each, and angular degrees being divided in the same manner), this doesn't map at all. Earth rotates 15 degrees in an hour (as it has to cover 360 degrees in a day), but there aren't any twelve marks on the compass. The compass is, basically, a binary division of the circle. We could write NNW as 1-0-0 (if we take north to be a 1 and south a zero, East 1 and W as a zero).

Nautical navigation with the compass and time of day actually requires some tables to decide the longitude from the direction of the sun and the time of day. The history of this problem is nicely given in "The Island Of The Day Before" by Umberto Eco.