this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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The use of base-60 for time and base-10 for most other things originates from different historical and mathematical practices. Base-60, or the sexagesimal system, is thought to have originated from the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians who used it for their astronomical calculations. This system has 12 divisors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60, allowing it to be easily divided into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, twelfths, and more, without resulting in fractions. This versatility has made it useful for timekeeping and angle measurement, both of which continue to be used to this day.
Conversely, the base-10 system, or decimal system, likely derives from the fact that humans have 10 fingers, making counting in this system intuitive and easy to learn. The base-10 system has fewer divisors: 1, 2, 5, 10, meaning it can only be cleanly divided by 2 and 5. While this system is less flexible for representing certain fractions, it’s more straightforward for counting and calculation, leading to its wide use in daily life, mathematics, and scientific calculations.
The integration of base-60 and base-10 systems hasn’t been widely adopted due to the significant societal change required. During the French Revolution, a decimal timekeeping system was attempted, with a day consisting of 10 hours, each hour containing 100 minutes, and each minute made up of 100 seconds. However, this system lacked popularity and was soon discarded.
Despite this, decimal watches exist today. These watches follow the concept of decimal time, dividing a 24-hour day differently, with an “hour” on a decimal watch being longer than a traditional hour, a “minute” being longer than a traditional minute, and a “second” being slightly shorter than a traditional second. They are typically seen as novelty or specialty items, appreciated by those who prefer the mathematical simplicity of a base-10 system. But due to the wide prevalence and deep entrenchment of the base-60 system in societal, technological, and legal systems, traditional timekeeping remains dominant.
(Source: I saw it on QI once - a British pub quiz style tv show)
I really want a decimal watch, just as a talking piece.
But I’m sure it would be a nightmare for actually keeping track of time.
People are probably thinking "fuck it, let's go with the upheaval! Let's get rid of the silly base 60 system!". Ok then. First, we could divide the length of a year into 100 days. Wait, no, that has to be 365 because otherwise the seasons would get out of whack.
Ok, but we could definitely have 10 months right? They did that before. Perfection. So every month should have exactly ... Uh 36.5 days... fuck
Well, how about having 10 day weeks? Shit. Same type of problem.
Fine, let's ignore months and weeks. What about the 24 hour day? Instead, we could break the day into 100 units. Each unit would be 14.4 "old minutes" long. That seems fine. You could subdivide that into 100 subunits, each of which would be about 8.6 "old seconds". To keep things reasonable the final divisor would be 10, so our new short "human counting" units would be about 0.86s. Groovy. Pity that years, months and weeks don't work out.
So why are there "really" 360s in an hour? Probably for the same reason that there are 360⁰ in a circle. Early astromomers and mathematicians probably thought that the universe was a perfectly created system. They likely modelled dates and geometry on earth's annual journey through the sky, but we're a little bit "off". Like how the months are supposedly lunar. We only discarded the idea of perfect celestial spheres relatively recently.
You hurt my brain …… 🤕 Exactly why base 60.
(Yeh. Geometry is also base 60)
Fun fact: base 60 was adopted by the Babylonians for two major reasons:
Don't let americans see that watch!
Haha. Why?
Probably due to americans using different units compared to "most" of the world, like miles, feet, inches, fahrenheit and others. Just a meme I guess.
So why didn’t we stupid humans have evolved the 6th finger yet??? We had thousands of years! We could have everything in base 12 but no, we are a lazy species…
Interesting to note, when babies are born, we tend to remove any 6th finger or toe.
Back in the day, sure - nowadays they're removed only if they have no mobility or otherwise cause discomfort to the wielder.