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Thread ID: 82484	2007-08-28 23:31:00	Why is an hour 1/24 or a day?	mejobloggs (264)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
585806	2007-08-30 08:18:00	If each hour was made up of 100 minutes and 100 or 1000 seconds then it would only require a change in our mind-set. and to be fair, the second is the (only) SI unit of time, and is decimal in the sense of milli, micro and nano seconds: so we do infact use "decimal" time to a degree, even if we do still use hours rather than kilo, mega and giga seconds	motorbyclist (188)
585807	2007-08-30 08:23:00	Whats so funny? I'm the one that came up with the divisibility answer. :illogical Multiples of 12 is a consequence. 12 has very little to do with the fact the these numbers are divisible by 12. Any number that has 3 and 4 as a factor will be divisible by 12. What do all of those numbers have? 3 and 4 as their factors - hence they are divisible by 12. So aren't we saying the same thing? The point I illustrated with the choice of numbers, was quite possibly the (lazy) method used to select those numbers (i.e. consecutive low numbers). it sounded (or read) to me like you thought you had found some surprising coincidence rather than a consequence. probably had something to do with using 3 factors that gave the impression, and that you were otherwise restating the original comment about divisibility. On the subject of degrees in a a circle, I don't know why they didn't pick 2520 degrees for a circle because there must have been a debate at the time. A number like 2520 is divisible by every single digit integer and a whole bunch of double digit integers too. Maybe the inventor perceived mental arithmetic was 10 times more difficult with a 4 digit number compared to a 3 digit number.....? that would most probably be right	motorbyclist (188)
585808	2007-08-30 12:48:00	No...No...No....that's DEVOLUTION! Not Evolution! :lol: :waughh: :eek: Devilution! Sounds like a kickass monster metal band!:lol:	rob_on_guitar (4196)
585809	2007-08-30 15:33:00	Lucas made a clock having ten hours to the day, but being a Lucas product it never worked anyway, so the average clock indicated 3.5 hours in it's life.	R2x1 (4628)
585810	2007-08-30 20:45:00	Lucas made a clock having ten hours to the day, but being a Lucas product it never worked anyway, so the average clock indicated 3.5 hours in it's life. Now that is not being nice to Terry,he worked there for years and won't admit to being a party to there demise. It was he that built that clock.	Cicero (40)
585811	2007-08-31 00:04:00	Reminds me of the fun a friend and I had in 1973 - we had both arrived recently from the UK and managed to convince the others in our office that Britain was going into metric time. My colleague produced a watch in support that was decimal. I forget the actual units but it was of course a specialist watch for timing factory functions. Good fun tho. Tom	Thomas01 (317)
585812	2007-08-31 19:29:00	Easy, 1 hour for each beer can in a slab!	porkster (6331)
585813	2007-09-01 02:20:00	But that is two (traditional) dozen (24). I've seen beer cartons containing two "decimal" dozen (20). I've never seen them with two (bakers') dozen (26).	Graham L (2)
585814	2007-09-02 10:48:00	Why not? The French tried decimal time for a short time after the Revolution; the unit is arbitrary, but a 10-hour day meant that hours were inconveniently long. The widely purchased (if not widely read) book A Short History of Time will not help. Here's an astronomer's answer (curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=594). The legend is that horses, which had had Sunday off for 4000 years, refused to work every seventh day of the new decimalised week.	joemac (9739)
585815	2007-09-02 10:56:00	The basis of geometry, calendars, time-keeping, currency etc were all established long ago by people who had a fascination with 12. Like 12 months, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 in a dozen, 12 inches to the foot, 12d to a shilling. God knows why. Naturally they divided the day into 12 bits, and also the night.	vinref (6194)
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