A day lasts 24 hours, every hour has 60 minutes and every minute has 60 seconds. This has been carefully explained by scientists as follows:
In today’s world, the most widely used number system is the decimal, which probably stems from the fact that humans can easily calculate with their fingertips. However, in early civilizations, binary and hexadecimal were used to break a date into smaller parts.
Thanks to documented evidence of Egyptian use of sundars, many historians believe it was the first civilization to split the date into smaller pieces. The invented sundial was just stakes plugged into the ground, its direction and shadow let them know what time of day it was. As early as 1500 BC, the Egyptians developed a sundial into a more advanced object. They used a T-shaped rod plugged into the ground, which was modified to divide the time between sunrise and sunset into 12 parts. This shows that the Egyptians used the binary coefficient early. They suggested that the number 12 could correspond to the number of moons in a year or the number of knuckles in each hand (minus the inch). Knuckles can help us count to 12 conveniently, not just 10 if finger counting.
The next generation sundial probably formed the first concept we often refer to as “hours”. Although the number of hours in a day is roughly the same, their length varies throughout the year and it is easy to see that summer will always be much longer than winter.
Without artificial light, the ancients used day and evening to fall into two opposite categories rather than two halves of the day. Without the help of a sundial, it became much more complicated to divide the time between sunset and the next morning. Egyptian astronomy also observed for the first time a set of 36 stars that divided the sky in equal parts. The passage of night is determined by the appearance of 18 stars in this set, three of which become landmarks between dawn and sunrise or between sunset and sunset, but people say always that it is twilight. Total darkness is marked by the remaining 12 stars, which means that the night will be divided into 12 parts.
From around 1550 to 1070 BC, this system of measurement was simplified by the use of a set of 24 stars. 12 of them mark the length of the night. Water meters were also used to record this time and are perhaps the most accurate chronographs of antiquity. One of these artefacts was found at the temple of Ammon at Karnak, dating from 1400 BC.
When morning and evening were divided into 12 parts, the concept of a 24-hour day was introduced. However, the concept of the duration of a certain hour did not arise in Greek times, when Greek astronomers began to use a new system for their theoretical calculations.
Hipparchus, an astronomer who studied long from 147 to 127 BC, proposed dividing a day into equal 24 hours, based on 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night vision; can be observed on the days of the equinox. spring and the autumn equinox. Ignoring this idea, people have continued to use seasonal sync over the centuries.)
Hipparchus and other Greek astronomers used earlier astronomical techniques developed by the Babylonians in Mesopotamia to further expand their studies of time. The Babylonians performed astronomical calculations in the sexagesimal system, i.e. the hexadecimal that they inherited from the Sumerians, who would have developed it around 2000 BC. We see that 60 can be divisible by the first 6 natural numbers and even divisible by 5, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30.
Although no longer widely used in calculations, this coefficient is still used to measure angles, geographic coordinates, and time. In fact, the circular face of the clock and the sphere of a globe have divisions thanks to the above calculation system.
Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (who lived between 276 and 194 BC) divided a circle into 60 parts to create a primitive geographic system of latitude, with lines of latitude crossing famous places on earth. A century later, Hipparchus perfected the lines of latitude, making them parallel and subject to the geological properties of the earth. He also designed a system of longitudinal lines that consisted of 360 degrees running north to south, pole to pole.
In Claudius Ptolemy’s Treaty of Almagest (circa 150 AD), he explained and reinforced the work of Hipparchus by dividing 360 degrees of latitude and longitude into smaller segments. Each degree is divided into 60 sections, each divided into 60 smaller sections. The first part, partes minutae primae, or “first minute”, was later reduced to “minute” or “minute”. We have 60 minutes in an hour. The second part is called “partes minutae secundae”, or “second minute”, which is abbreviated as “second”, or “second” as we know it. We have 60 seconds in a minute.
However, the concept of minutes and seconds was not used to determine time until the Almagest Treaty was closed for hundreds of years. At that time, people only divided clocks into two halves, or 3/4 parts or 12 parts, but no one divided them into 60 parts. In fact, it is not designed that 60 minutes equals one hour. It was only when the first mechanical watch appeared a few minutes in the 16th century that it gradually emerged.
Through research and contributions from ancient times, modern society has formed concepts such as a day at 24 hours, an hour at 60 minutes, and a minute at 60 seconds. However, scientific advancements today have helped to make the determination of the unit of time more precise. There was a time when the division of seconds into fractions based on astronomical events was discussed. In 1967, the concept of seconds was recalculated. Consequently, the second redefined is equal to 9,192,631,770 times the energy conversion cycle of the cesium atom. This reconstruction ushered in the era of atomic timekeeping and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). So not every minute contains 60 seconds, but about 8 minutes will have 61 seconds per decade.
