this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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[–] hglman 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The reason for 12-hour clocks is most cultures worldwide have variable length hours of over a year. For Western times this comes from Greeks who had 12 day and 12 night hours. Early water clocks in antiquity would attempt to make that adjustment automatically.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It came from the Sumerians, not the Greeks.

[–] hglman 10 points 1 year ago

The Greeks specifically build water clocks with variable length days.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We should just use second notation for everything.

I’ll be there in 5 min? I’ll be there in 2 or 3 hundo!

See you tommorow? See you in in 86K!

Next week? About half a Megasec!

Doesn’t Megasecond sound better than Fortnite?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is a fun fun sci-fi book called "Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge. The Humans use epoch time with si prefixed Seconds for time,

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

On the gripping hand, the Brownies could make way better clocks than we could.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That is a great book. Did you read the sequels?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Ehhhh, no. There are very important reasons we divide the time this way. 24 is a highly composite number (a number with more divisors than all numbers preceding it; like an opposite of a prime number). This allows us to easily divide the day into halves, thirds, quarters and sixths. So is 60, with even more divisors. My guess is the same thing goes for the switch from Roman to Julian calendar (ten to twelve months in a year)

[–] setsneedtofeed 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The history of the calendar in Roman times is actually an entire topic to itself.

The pre-Julian calendar required fine tuning every year in winter to keep the rest of the months aligned with the seasons.

Technically not a difficult job to keep the calendar running smoothly and consistently, but the person in charge of the calendar in Rome was a politician, so they would play political games with the length of the year.

Caesar wanted a calendar that would run on auto-pilot to strip power away from those politicians.

By sheer coincidence when Caesar made his reform, during the the changeover of calendars while he was in charge, he got to rule over a 400+ day long year.

[–] Misconduct 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ahhh. This is it. This is the good stuff. Lemmy is really coming along I missed this.

[–] Yoz 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you :) I love how lemmy has all the smart people.

[–] ManjuuLemmy 2 points 1 year ago

It's thanks to post like these that I now have to find videos on how to clock was invented and burn my weekend being productive. Thanks stranger!

[–] Imgonnatrythis 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So make it 24 then. What's this 12shit?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The History of the clock is actually pretty interesting https://www.britannica.com/topic/12-hour-clock

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] sockenklaus 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah that didn't fly at all ..

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Thank goodness for the stardate!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Why hasn't the Metric world found a better way? I want a clock based around multiples of 10, dammit!

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One benefit of base 12 and base 60 over base 10 for everyday use with things like time is simple factorization. You can divide 12 hours evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths, and 60 minutes evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, etc. With base 10, you've just got halves and fifths.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Another benefit of base 12 is that you can count to 12 easily with one hand by using your thumb to count each of the 3 segments on your 4 fingers.

I learned that on that other website prior to the great migration and it blew my mind then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Wait until you find out that binary counting allows you to count to 31 with one hand.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

tries it

Whoa. Dude that's super useful.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm trying to think of a situation where I need to count to 12 on one hand 🤔

This would be useful if I was used to counting with base 12.

[–] CurlyMoustache 4 points 1 year ago

When ordering twelve beers

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pros scale that up to base 60 by counting to 12 and using the other hand to count how many times they have counted to 12.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thems rookie numbers. You can get to 144 using the twelve segments on each hand.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That is so cool! Thanks for the tip

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah, I know all about that, but I don't think we'll convince people to change everything to base 12, so let's go with a base 10 clock.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

A base-10 unit circle would be abhorrent. 1/2 of a circle is an important concept, but 1/5th and 1/10th of a circle are rarely used in geometry or trigonometry. Meanwhile, a right angle (1/4 of a circle) would require an ugly fraction, and the angle of an equilateral triangle (1/6th) would require a repeating decimal.

Think of 12-hour clocks and 360-degree circles as paper bags. When we're fucking with angular concepts, you do not want to take those bags off Decimal's head.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I just want everything to be switched to 24 instead of 12. Why everyone want to complicate things?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I see what you did there and it’s very funny.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because base ten sucks for practical use and anything that needs division.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] CurlyMoustache 1 points 1 year ago

"It's hex'o clock somewhere 😉"

[–] hglman 8 points 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time?wprov=sfla1

The French tried at the same time they adopted the rest of the metric system but it just didnt offer much advantage vs changing out clocks.

With digital clocks it would be simpler now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It was called the French Republican Calendar. Didn’t last very long.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Some people briefly tried that during the French Revolution, but it never caught on.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Chad American broken clocks: right twice per day Virgin Bri‘ish broken clocks: only right once per day

pwnd

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

A slow clock might not be right in your entire lifetime.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Inventor for sure used the ~~imperial~~ barbarian measuring system