Internet Beat Time

Swatch .beat time — the borderless internet clock that nearly took over the world in 1998.

In 1998, Swatch proposed Internet Time - a single global clock with no time zones. The day is divided into 1,000 .beats. @000 is midnight in Biel, Switzerland. @500 is noon. Each beat is 86.4 seconds. The same @beat is the same moment everywhere on Earth, no conversions, no offsets, no daylight saving. It launched at MIT with ICQ and Phantasy Star Online as early adopters. A satellite named Beatnik was planned for deployment from the Mir Space Station to broadcast it globally - amateur radio operators blocked it. The dot-com bubble burst around 2001 and Swatch quietly stopped, no press release. This extension shows the current .beat time with a live donut clock, your local time alongside Biel time, and a plain-English explanation of what beats are for anyone new to the concept. It also has a 1998 mode. Features — Live .beat clock with donut display — Beat context label (Golden Hour, Dead of Night, Morning, etc.) — Your local time and Biel time side by side — Beats remaining in the day — Swatch date format (d30.05.26 — always day.month.year) — Full history and mechanics in About — 1998 iMac nostalgia mode, because of course Privacy No data collected. No network requests. The only permission is storage, used to remember your theme preference between sessions.