Actually, there was a sort-of metric calendar used for 14 years between the
French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, at the same time the rejection
of the old system of measures gave rise to the metric system.

Here's what I found out about it from a Google search:

-       The year was divided into twelve months, each of 30 days with the names of
the months taken from natural phenomena, mostly having to do with the
weather.

-       Every month is divided into three dicades of ten days each; in the French
Republican era these dicades took the place of weeks.

-       The year begins on September 22, 1792 - the day of the Proclamation of the
Republic

-       At the end of the year (i.e, in September) there are either five or six
extra days, which formed a sort of extended festival.

                                        *       *       *

Starting the year with the date of the Proclamation of the Republic reminds
me of when I was analyzing some radio field strength data we took in France.
The automated equipment grabbed a signal strength measurement several times
a second, along with Lat/Long data via a GPS receiver. I plotted it up and
expected to see a bit of distortion when I plotted it on top of a map of
France, since the geodesic reference system used in France differed from the
WGS84 datum used in GPS.

I plotted the data and it was shifted way off of alignment from the French
electronic map database, not a little, but a couple hundred miles.  Come to
find out, after looking at it a bit more and checking with a French
colleague, that the 0 meridian for at least some French maps runs through
Paris, not Greenwich. Once we applied the appropriate correction, the data
aligned quite nicely.

Jack


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