Who invented 60 seconds

In the Egyptian system, the length of the day-time and night-time hours were unequal and varied with the seasons. The subdivision of hours and minutes into 60 comes from the ancient Babylonians who had a predilection for using numbers to the base Lomb says it's likely that the Babylonians were interested in because that was their estimate for the number of days in a year.

Their adoption of a base 60 system was probably allowed them to make complex calculations using fractions. The ancient Chinese used a dual time system where they divided the day into 12 so-called, 'double hours', originally with the middle of the first double hour being at midnight.

They also had a separate system in which a day was divided into equal parts called 'ke', that are sometimes translated as 'mark' into English. Because of this inconvenience, much later on, in the year of our era, the number of ke in a day was reduced to 96," says Lomb. While many cultures had their own calendars, there doesn't appear to be evidence for equivalent methods for keeping time. In , the Swiss watch company Swatch introduced the concept of a decimal Internet Time in which the day is divided into 'beats' so that each beat is equal to 1 minute The beats were denoted by the symbol, so that, for example, denotes a time period equal to six hours.

I think that I am safe in stating that there will be no change from the present system of time measurement in the foreseeable future. Keeping time While our units for measuring time seem to be here to stay, the way we measure time has changed significantly over the centuries. The Ancient Egypitians used sundials and waterclocks, as did several civilisations after them. Hourglasses were also an important time-keeping device before the invention of mechanical and pendulum clocks.

The timepiece--a specimen of which, found at the Temple of Ammon in Karnak, dated back to B. Once both the light and dark hours were divided into 12 parts, the concept of a hour day was in place. The concept of fixed-length hours, however, did not originate until the Hellenistic period, when Greek astronomers began using such a system for their theoretical calculations. Hipparchus, whose work primarily took place between and B.

Despite this suggestion, laypeople continued to use seasonally varying hours for many centuries. Hours of fixed length became commonplace only after mechanical clocks first appeared in Europe during the 14th century.

Hipparchus and other Greek astronomers employed astronomical techniques that were previously developed by the Babylonians, who resided in Mesopotamia.

The Babylonians made astronomical calculations in the sexagesimal base 60 system they inherited from the Sumerians, who developed it around B. Although it is unknown why 60 was chosen, it is notably convenient for expressing fractions, since 60 is the smallest number divisible by the first six counting numbers as well as by 10, 12, 15, 20 and Although it is no longer used for general computation, the sexagesimal system is still used to measure angles, geographic coordinates and time.

In fact, both the circular face of a clock and the sphere of a globe owe their divisions to a 4,year-old numeric system of the Babylonians. The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes who lived circa to B. A century later, Hipparchus normalized the lines of latitude, making them parallel and obedient to the earth's geometry.

He also devised a system of longitude lines that encompassed degrees and that ran north to south, from pole to pole. In his treatise Almagest circa A. Each degree was divided into 60 parts, each of which was again subdivided into 60 smaller parts. The first division, partes minutae primae, or first minute, became known simply as the "minute. Minutes and seconds, however, were not used for everyday timekeeping until many centuries after the Almagest. Clock displays divided the hour into halves, thirds, quarters and sometimes even 12 parts, but never by In fact, the hour was not commonly understood to be the duration of 60 minutes.

It was not practical for the general public to consider minutes until the first mechanical clocks that displayed minutes appeared near the end of the 16th century. Even today, many clocks and wristwatches have a resolution of only one minute and do not display seconds. Thanks to the ancient civilizations that defined and preserved the divisions of time, modern society still conceives of a day of 24 hours, an hour of 60 minutes and a minute of 60 seconds.

The first people to break up a day into smaller parts were the ancient Egyptians. More than years ago, they began using sundials, which were the first types of clocks.

Have you ever noticed how your shadow grows bigger or smaller depending on what time of day it is? The Egyptians told time by putting stakes in the ground and measuring the shadows they made. Eventually sundials got bigger and fancier. Ten is easy to count—you have 10 fingers and 10 toes—but 10 can only be divided by two and five.

To tell time at night, the Egyptians looked to the stars.