ClockHubClockHubsixteen hundred
Military time writes every hour of the day as a two-digit number from 00 to 23, then appends the minutes as two more digits. 1600 therefore means 16 hours and 00 minutes past midnight — 4:00 PM on a 12-hour clock.
Read aloud it becomes "sixteen hundred". A zero minutes value is spoken as "hundred", which is why whole hours end in "hundred"; minutes below ten take an "oh" in front, as in "seventeen oh five" for 1705.
Twelve-hour clocks split the day at noon. Hours 00 through 11 are AM, hours 12 through 23 are PM, and the two boundary hours are the ones people get wrong: 0000 is 12:00 AM and 1200 is 12:00 PM. 1600 sits on the PM side of that line, which is why it converts to 4:00 PM.
Going the other way is the same arithmetic in reverse. Take 4 and PM, drop the suffix, and add 12 to any PM hour — then watch the two twelve-o’clock cases, where 12 AM becomes 00 and 12 PM stays 12. 4:00 PM becomes 1600.
| Military | Standard | Spoken |
|---|---|---|
| 1500 | 3:00 PM | fifteen hundred |
| 1515 | 3:15 PM | fifteen fifteen |
| 1520 | 3:20 PM | fifteen twenty |
| 1530 | 3:30 PM | fifteen thirty |
| 1545 | 3:45 PM | fifteen forty-five |
| 1550 | 3:50 PM | fifteen fifty |
| 1600 | 4:00 PM | sixteen hundred |
| 1615 | 4:15 PM | sixteen fifteen |
| 1630 | 4:30 PM | sixteen thirty |
| 1645 | 4:45 PM | sixteen forty-five |
| 1700 | 5:00 PM | seventeen hundred |