I lived through the changeover here in Oz. The only reason that 12 was confusing was because we used it as well as 10. There is nothing intrinsically easier about base ten. But a society which mixes two bases together will always find one messier. Since we count in base 10, clearly money in base 12 (well some money, not all) was always going to be a bad mix. What I said was that it would have been vastly better if all our number systems had been base 12. No stupid base 10 anywhere. All the standard multipliers could have been base 12, and everything would have worked out. It could easily have been so, but we would have needed to have bashed the Romans into shape over this a very long time ago. Those of dim wit who could only count on their fingers might have been at a very slight disadvantage, but that is all. Favouring a number system that was convenient because of the number of digits we had on our limbs versus a mathematically clean one was just unfortunate.
Did I miss something while I was away?
Check the current post #17 for a hint of what you missed…
Has Siam Sam been telling stories about some of the strange live sex shows in Patpong?
I understand that originally the hour (and the degree) were divided into small parts (minutae or minutes) and then, when our need for precision required it, into second minutes, eventually shortened to seconds. The base 60 probably does go back to the Babylonians.
Originally (in some western culture—this really requires research) the daylight was divided into 12 hours and the night into four watches (with obvious meaning). The hours therefore had variable length, depending on season. Thus midday came at the beginning of the seventh hour and the ninth hour was the time between 2 and 3 PM and was a mealtime. Eventually, the word “nine”, modified to “noon” came to mark that meal and the time migrated down to its current location. Eventually, something like our current system with equal hours continuing day and night evolved. Then, mainly for the railroads, standard times evolved in the late nineteenth century. It didn’t take over immediately. My father, born 1906, said he remembered seeing the clock in Media, PA (seat of Delaware County) being three minutes behind the clocks in Philadelphia. Then it all devolved with the invention of DST.
Nothing a little youth in Asia can’t cure.
(I am a horrible person for even thinking that, and you’re horrible for laughing.)
I’ve often wondered about cancer and the girls who puff cigarettes vaginally.
Babylonian astronomers noticed that each day the sun rised in a different place relative to the fixed stars. After one year, the sun was back at the original position.
So, each day the sun moved 1/365 of the circle. Since 360 is a better number than 365 (it has more dividers), they decided to consider that the sun moved 1/360 of the circle (1 degree) each day.
Sure there is, at least according to the *original *definitions, all the various units are related to each other. A litre is the volume of a cube 10cm per side, a kilogram is the weight of 1 litre of water, and so on.