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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 ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Interesting, thanks for the detailed description!

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