![]() A few hundred years ago (1700s) time keeping was highly dependent on being stationary. The real reason the 24 hour day / 60 minute-second paradigm is so widely used is much more modern. After all, there are many things from the same originating culture and era we don't use. Many people are talking about the origin of a 60 base system and where it came from (thousands of years ago) but I don't see any comments explaining why it's so universally adopted. This required new manufacturing techniques and the right combination of different metals that expand and contract differently to cancel each other out.īefore that mechanical clocks where so large, they required a building/tower to fit them, and they where off by 30 minutes per week and had to be synchronized with a sundial. This was solved with the longitude prize winners who where able to make very accurate small enough clocks that where much more resistant to moisture, temperature changes and the movements of a ship on the ocean. They could use a small telescope/sextant to measure star positions, but their movement makes their observatory out of sync with previous measurements. They could hardly tell when to change the course more to the north or south or tell how much longer the trip would take. Knowing the longitude of a ship that can not see any land for many weeks was a big problem for Pre-steam-engine transoceanic sailing ships. using only whole numbers saves a lot of time and paper in a time where writing and copying is very expensive and time consuming. Besides that, this measurement of time is universal and 60 minutes her hour was chosen because 60 has more useful prime factors than 24/12, who lack the ability to be divisible by 5/10/20/30. This astronomical calendar was locally much more accurate, but as soon as you change the observatories longitude, your observations are off by a few minutes. In astronomy time easily translates into degrees in anything that has a stable orbit. That could easily determine the time of the astronomical year fairly accurate. ![]() Minutes where invented by pre-telescope astronomy to more accurately measure the relative positions of stars in degrees. Observing the moon is simple, and it is the same moon for everyone, but it is also fairly inaccurate because moons orbit is not much in sync with earths orbit when it comes to timing. and calendars are very important to get the timing right for efficient farming, trade and to feed large populations on missions. There are still many different calendar systems.
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