Comment on Whoever invented the 12-hour clock never doubted that people will always know if it's day or night

• TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  That’s a Babylonian thing. They were obsessed with highly divisible numbers like, 12, 24 and 60. Basically the opposite of prime numbers, which are super annoying to divide. Babylonians wanted their numbers to as nice as possible when dividing. For example, 60 is particularly nice since it’s not absurdly large, but when dividing it, you have lots of options.

  All of this was long before the decimal point and calculators were invented, so divisibility was a big thing back then. Thanks to the babylonians, we have super messy time units now. Thanks to the Romans, we also have super messy units for length, weight and volume. That’s not a huge deal though, since basically nobody uses those any more.

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  • GraniteM@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Thanks to the Romans, we also have super messy units for length

    But we can still blame the British for the furlong.

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    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      According to that Wikipedia article:

      The furlong was historically viewed as being equivalent to the Roman stade (stadium), which in turn derived from the Greek system.

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  • Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I wouldn’t blame the Babylonians for us breaking the good standard and going 58, 59, 60, 61, 62 instead of the 58, 59, 100, 101, 102 that works just fine. They were first, we are the ones who added a new system aside the old one instead of replacing it.

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    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      The French actually kicked out so much trash during the Revolution. Time units did stick around though, but at least they tried.

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  • billbasher@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Interesting, thanks for the detailed description!

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• Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  If that was the case, we would now be talking about 48 h clocks vs. 24 h clocks.

  18:40 pm on the 24h clock would equal 36:40 on the 48 h clock.
  You would still not know whether it’s night or day just looking at the time.

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  • billbasher@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    You’re not wrong but the question is why?

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    • Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Why what?

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      • billbasher@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I’m sorry I was inebriated this question makes no sense

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