Facebook programmer invents Flick, a new unit of time

Facebook announced that their programmers have invented a new time unit called Flick. According to Facebook, Flick is the smallest time unit which is larger than a nanosecond. Flicks is defined as 1/705,600,000 of a second.

Flick derives its name from the phrase "frame-tick", which is also why you might want to use them. Flicks are designed to help measure individual frame duration for video frame rates. So whether your video is 24hz, 25hz, 30hz, 48hz, 50hz, 60hz, 90hz, 100hz, or 120hz, you’ll be able to use Flicks to ensure that everything is in sync while still using whole integers (instead of decimals).

We've launched Flicks, a unit of time, slightly larger than a nanosecond that exactly subdivides media frame rates and sampling frequencies. https://t.co/w9SDBznXRE

— Facebook Open Source (@fbOpenSource) January 22, 2018

One of the creators of Flicks is Christopher Horvath, a former architect with Facebook's Story Studio. Horvath, who left Facebook in May, was as surprised as anyone to see that his invention had made it into the real world.

Facebook has released its documentation for the creation and use of flicks as open source, meaning that anybody can download it and add support for the unit into their own software. That, in turn, means that flicks could become a standard unit of time - if not on your wristwatch, then in the visual arts.