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60 Minutes In 1 Hour

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Why are there threescore seconds in a infinitesimal, 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day? Who decided on these time divisions?

  • THE Sectionalization of the hour into sixty minutes and of the infinitesimal into sixty seconds comes from the Babylonians who used a sexagesimal (counting in 60s) organization for mathematics and astronomy. They derived their number system from the Sumerians who were using it every bit early on as 3500 BC. The apply of 12 subdivisions for day and dark, with sixty for hours and minutes, turns out to exist much more useful than (say) 10 and 100 if y'all desire to avoid having to use complicated notations for parts of a solar day. Twelve is divisible by two, 3, four, half dozen and 12 itself - whereas x has simply iii divisers - whole numbers that divide information technology a whole number of times. Sixty has 12 divisers and because 60 = 5 x 12 it combines the advantages of both 10 and 12. In fact both 12 and lx share the property that they accept more divisers than any number smaller than themselves. This doesn't, of grade, explicate how this system spread throughout the world.

    Phil Molyneux, London W2.

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60 Minutes In 1 Hour,

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1487,00.html

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