Centimeter? Degrees? 60s?

[Nishroch_Order]

I was just wondering how did these constants come to be?

Things like,

distance : metres
bearing : ~ degrees
Time of a minute: 60seconds (seconds for that matter too)
Days of a week : 7

Hope someone would be able to help!
thx in advance

[jjimm]

It’s all historical.

The metric system was first adopted in France in the 18th century to get round the ridiculous complexity caused by arbitrary imperial units: Here’s the entire history. An eminently sensible system.

Here’s a chronology of time measurement for you.

Degrees? Not sure. Haven’t got time to google it.

[Popup]

*Originally posted by Nishroch Order *
**Days of a week : 7
**

This is not a simple matter.
Quoting from The Calendar FAQ

**5.1 What is the origin of the 7-day week? **
Digging into the history of the 7-day week is a very complicated matter. Authorities have very different opinions about the history of the week, and they frequently present their speculations as if they were indisputable facts. The only thing we seem to know for certain about the origin of the 7-day week is that we know nothing for certain.

The first pages of the Bible explain how God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. This seventh day became the Jewish day of rest, the sabbath, Saturday.

Extra-biblical locations sometimes mentioned as the birthplace of the 7-day week include: Babylon, Persia, and several others. The week was known in Rome before the advent of Christianity.

The division of the circle into 360 degrees, and then again into 60 minutes, each of which comprises 60 seconds comes (just like the day/hour/minute/second time system) from the Babylonians. I’m pretty sure the Master has covered it. (And I’m very sure that it has been discussed here before!)

[CalMeacham]

The fact that the year has 365 days and the circle 360 degrees is very suggestive. That the Babylionians were noted astronomers adds to my suspicion that the 360 degree circle was the combination of a 365 day year with a bit of adjustment to use the value of 360, which is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, etc. (and not because cosmic encounters changed the length of the year, a la Velikovski).

As for the seven day week, I’ve always suspected that it was the result of taking a lunar month of 28 days (again, slightly edited from its true value for ease of calculation) divided by four main phases (full, first quarter, new, last quarter).

The division of hours into 60 minutes (“minutes” = “small parts”) and seconds (short for “second minutes” = “smaller parts”) is another Babylonian result. They used a system of 60, which is, again, evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. It got applied to both tome and angle; not surprising when you consider that you can treat the apparent circling of the sun (and the real orbit of the earth) as a circle.

Meters, as jjimm notes, is a recent innovation.

[GuanoLad]

I agree wholeheartedly with CalMeacham. His educated guesses match my own.