101 Misc: Why An Hour Has 60 Minutes (101.html)
by David KC Cole
Table of Contents
Introduction
External References (Sources)
Introduction
This article explains how the various time intervals probably evolved. Some ancient explanations are only plausible. But the more recent developments presented are very factual and name the individuals involved. Sources are included at the bottom of the article
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Roman Water Wheel
Why an hour has 60 minutes
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Keywords: Months, Weeks, Years, Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Year Numbers, Clocks, Calendars, Astrology, Horoscopes
Months
The very first people on the earth certainly knew that the sun rises each morning and that it sets each evening. We say that the sun rises and sets every day. This length of time (from one sunrise to the next sunrise) called a "day" was probably the first notion of a period of time. Of course this length of time included both a day and a night. The first people on the earth lived fairly close to the equator where the length of each day and each night remained approximately the same, all the time. Eventually, after people learned how to count, they were able to count the number of days. For example, they could say that it has been 10 (or 15) days since a certain notable event happened. But other ideas of time took much longer to discover.
A long, long time ago, shepherds must have been very bored, night after night, while they watched their sheep. Many of them started watching the stars all night long. Of course, they noticed that almost all of the stars never changed positions, although the whole sky rotated overhead. These fixed stars remained stationary in the sky relative to each other. The shepherds imagined pictures in the night sky, formed by imaginary lines linking some of the stars. (Through the ages, astronomers have assigned names to the main shapes in these pictures. A "constellation" is the scientific word for such a shape.) Most of the shapes of these imagined pictures were familiar animal shapes. They imagined such things as lions, goats, fish, scorpions and even people. They noticed that as the moon travelled across the sky, it passed between some of these stars, slowly passing through each shape. When this happened, they said the moon visited one of these shapes. After about every 3 days, the moon moved into the next shape . . . . . over and over again . . . . time after time. The moon only visits these same 12 special shapes, it never visits any of the other shapes in the night-time sky. The shepherds gave each of these 12 shapes a different name. The first shape was a goat named Capricorn. Then they imagined a woman carrying water in two pails suspended on each end of a yoke that she carried across her shoulders. Her name was Aquarius. These 12 pictures, or signs, were called the Zodiac. The Greek word "Zodiac" appropriately means "circle of animals". We still use the word, Zodiac, when we speak of these 12 signs. The 12 signs of the Zodiac visited by the moon every month were named: Capricorn (goat), Aquarius (water-bearer), Pisces (fish), Aries (ram), Taurus (bull), Gemini (twins), Cancer (crab), Leo (lion), Virgo (maiden), Libra (scales), Scorpio (scorpion) and Sagittarius (archer). The author wrote a children's story about the Zodiac (below) to help them remember the names of the these 12 constellations.
The
Zodiac circle begins with CapricOrn, the gOat, whose letter "O"
looks like a round pond of water. The next position is a lady (named
Aquarius) who is carrying water from the pond. Beside the lady is
her husband, Pisces, the fisherman, who has just caught 2 fish that
are flying through the air. These fish scared Aries, the ram, who
is chasing the bull, Taurus, who is chasing the Gemini twins. These
twins had found a crab, named Cancer, and a baby lion, named Leo,
that they gave to their sister, Virgo. She used her Libra scales to
weigh her pet scorpion, named Scorpio, that had a pointed tail shaped
like an arrow. Her brother, Sagittarius, the archer, used his bow to
shoot Scorpio's tail (the arrow) at the "O" on the side
of CapricOrn, the gOat (which is swimming in the pond in the first
position of the Zodiac.)
The moon moves quite quickly relative to the stars, taking about 28 days to pass through all the signs of the zodiac and return to the same place in the sky. The shepherds gave a name to this period of about 28 days; they called it a month.
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Signs Of The Zodiac
Weeks
They also noticed that once about every 28 days the moon was a fully lit circle. Then a sliver of the moon became darker each day, and after 7 days, the lit-up part of the moon was only the left half of a circle. After another 7 days, the moon was completely dark. After another 7 days, the other half of the moon was lit up. Finally after another 7 days the moon was a fully lit circle again (as seen below). They called a fully lit moon, a "full moon". This name is used even today. Today, we say that the moon has four phases, each phase being approximately 7 days. I believe that this is the reason that we say that 7 days is a week. (But no-one knows this for sure.) The shepherds noticed that on each successive "full moon", the moon was in a different sign of the zodiac, first in Capricorn, then in Aquarius etc. Perhaps the ancient shepherds would remark that the "full moon" was in the month of "Aries", for example. In this way, the names of the signs of the zodiac were probably the earliest names for each month.
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Phases Of The Moon
Week-Day Names
The ancient civilizations (Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, etc) had also noticed that a few of the "stars" were not "fixed stars". These moving stars were said to be gods that moved in the night sky; always within the signs of the Zodiac. (Thousands of years ago, ancient storytellers made up stories about what happened to these gods as they visited the different constellations.) More recently, the telescope was invented (and patented) in 1608 by Hans Lippershey. But Galileo Galilei was the first known person to point a telescope at the stars in 1609. He saw the difference between the planets and the other (fixed) stars. We now know that the few moving stars are planets that move in near-circles around our sun. Long before telescopes were invented, with their naked eyes, people could only see the following moving stars: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. They also knew that the Sun and the Moon moved between the stars in the sky. This made 7 visible "moving heavenly bodies" that visited the shapes in the sky. They named each day of the week after each of these 7 "moving heavenly bodies". In English, these names are respectively: Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. In French, these names are respectively: mercredi, vendredi, mardi, jeudi, samedi, dimanche and lundi. Careful examination of these 14 weekday names permits us to guess which "moving heavenly body" each weekday was assigned to:
DAY JOUR VISIBLE HEAVENLY BODY
--------- -------- ---------------------
Sunday dimanche sun
Monday lundi moon
Tuesday mardi Mars
Wednesday mercredi Mercury
Thursday jeudi Jupiter
Friday vendredi Venus
Saturday samedi Saturn
Names of Months
These early moon-watchers noticed another strange thing about the moon. . . . Each month, every 28 days, the full moon would be seen in a different sign of the Zodiac. So they started calling each new period of 28 days a different name. This new different name was the name of the sign that the full moon was visiting. So way back then, the names of the months were probably the names of the signs of the Zodiac. Instead of saying the 3rd day of March, they could have said the 3rd day of Capricorn. (But don't jump to the conclusion that March always means Capricorn, because it doesn't.)
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Stonehenge Today
Most of us recognise StoneHenge (shown above and also a little further down below). Back in the time, even before the time that Stonehenge was built, the astronomers knew that the moon took around 29 days to complete a lunar cycle. But it was more important to know the solar cycle. For most civiizations, it was important to know the first day of spring, because that was when major crops had to be planted. This date (March 21 for us) was the date following winter, when the hours of daylight matched the hours of night time; called the equinox. This was difficult to measure exactly, but it wasn't important to be exact, a few days early or late shouldn't matter. (But it did matter; a whole crop year might be lost.) Anyway, it was easier to know exactly when the first day of summer arrived. This date (June 21 for us) is when the sun rises at its most northerly point giving us the longest day called the summer solstice. This date could be determined exactly by lining up two stones with the rising sun on that day. Exactly on that day, the sun rises at the most northern point on the eastern horizon. That is exactly what Stonehenge was built to do. The Stonehenge astronomers could count days very well. They knew that the vernal equinox always arrived exactly 3/4 a year after the summer solstice. (They knew that 3/4 year was exactly 267 days.) Equipped with Stonehenge and a wall to use as a "blackboard" to mark (to count the days), those astronomers could announce exactly when to plant the crops. They did it like magic. That is why astronomers were treated as the most knowledgable people in those days. That is why the astronomers in most countries needed a Stonehenge-like rock structure. Prior to Stonehenge, many other rocks in many other countries were lined up to correctly mark the beginning of summer. Remember, this was important so that they could know exactly the first day of Spring. Eventually, the various astronomers adjusted the "date for planting" according to the latitude. People who lived farther North would need to plant a numer of days later to avoid the "early frosts" that sometimes occur. People further south were luckier to have a longer growing season, because they could plant their crops earlier. Probably the early astronomers or priests had all this knowledge. Certain types of crops needed a longer growing time so this was taken into account. Farmers deviated from the advice of the priests at their peril; sometimes their crops failed.
What we need to retain from the preceding paragraph is that early civilizations needed a type of Stonehenge to know the dates of the seasons. But to measure times less than a year, normal people "counted on the moon", which everyone could see. So the earliest calendars marked the date of the "new year". We call this the solar cycle. People watched the moon to count each group of about 29 days. We call this the lunar cycle. This would have been much simpler if there were an integer number of lunar cycles in a solar cycle. But it isn't; it never was. This has caused trouble for everyone who ever tried to create a calendar. Ever since 6000 BCE (and even before that) this has been a problem. Perhaps the Chinese were the first to resolve this problem. But the Europeans and many others have struggled with this problem for years. It was King Numa Pompilius (shown below) in 713 BCE who was one of the first Europeans to make a 12 month calendar. More is said about him below.
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King Numa Pompilius
The Calendar of King Numa Pompilius in 713 BCE
Prior to 713 BCE, for the Romans, the names of the months originally were 10 simple numbers. The mundane winter months were last on the list. The center column far below shows the month names in English. The rightmost column explains why the month was given a name instead of a number. Lucas Reilly has studied this issue in detail. In his article, in Source 13, Lucas explains that long, long ago, the months of January, February didn't even exist. Being bitter cold winter months, if someone asked "What month is this?" The answer would be "None". Children born during the winter didn't have a birth-month. Winter was a useless time of the year. All they had was 10 months and winter. But the calendar owners, the astronomers, knew that March 21 was the vernal equinox, the beginning of spring, the end of winter, the most important day of the year. And June 21 was always the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The year ended on Dec 21, the shortest day of the year. Sometime between December 21 and March 21 were around 60 days of winter. Every year started on March 21, so the calendar matched the seasons. To do this, winter had a variable number of days. But in 713 BCE, King Numa Pompilius changed the calendar to match the moon, not the seasons. He did this by addding two new months, January and February to the end of the calendar. He also renumbered the days in each month. His new calendar had 355 days, and 12 months. Because the lunar cycle was 29.5 days, Numa alloted each month either 29 or 31 days, because odd numbers were luckier than even numbers. But one month had to have an even number of days. That is why February has had 28 days almost every year since 713 BCE. In Numa's calendar, the months changed in synchronism with the moons phases. But unfortunately, the seasons suffered in Numa's calendar. Each season suffered by 10 whole days. The ideal planting time was 10 days different every year. The astronomers were probably pleased because they could blame Numa and it ensured them of lots of work every year.
If Numa's calendar had a rhyme for days of the months. It might have been a Latin version of:
29 days hath September, April, June, and November
And Sextilius, and December and January
All the rest have 31, except February
Which unluckily has 28, with no exceptions
But ask an astronomer when to plant.
To learn more about King Numa's calendar, read the article in Source 13.
But the seasons quickly became very wrong in Numa's annual calendar of 355 days. When the seasons got noticably wrong, they added a "leap month" and chopped off a few days from February. But they didn't do this very systematically. The people needed to use a valid calendar to know when to plant their crops and gardens. If not an early frost or a late harvest might cause problems. After about 800 years, despite leap months and leap days, the seasons were wrong by about 80 days, which would have disrupted farming if they used the calendar. The farmers needed a working calendar. Eventually Julius Caesar listened and demanded a solution to the farmers dilemna. His astronomers nixed the leap months and knew that each year had about 365.25 days. To correct the seasons, the year 46 BCE was assigned 445 days to add 80 days. His calendar corrected the date of an equinox to make it exactly right, probably in March 21, 46 BCE. Caesar also made January the first month (and February the second month) of the calendar. But even powerful Caesar could not rename the months between September and December. These months had been months 7 to 10 since way before Numa's time.
A few countries around the world consider the end or beginning of their year to be Dec 21. The main person in a few religions all around the world are said to have been born on Dec 25. The Christian religions cite Dec 25 as the birth of their Messiah because of the Star of Bethleham. The reason for this is described in magnificent detail in Source 14. The most pertinent part of this text talks about the most retrograde motion of Jupiter (in those years) which happened on Dec 25 in 2 BCE. Many religions cite Dec 21 or Dec 25 as the date of their key person. The Ancient Romans celebrated Dec 25 as Sol Invicta. Some say this is why Christmas has its proxmity to Dec 21, the winter solstice.
The article about the Star of Bethlehem in WikiPedia (Source 14) says:
Jupiter next continued to move and then stopped in its apparent retrograde motion on December 25 of 2 BC over the town of Bethlehem.[75] Since planets in their orbits have a "stationary point",[68][70] a planet moves eastward through the stars but, "As it approaches the opposite point in the sky from the sun, it appears to slow, come to a full stop, and move backward (westward) through the sky for some weeks. Again it slows, stops, and resumes its eastward course," said Chester.[68] The date of December 25 that Jupiter appeared to stop while in retrograde took place in the season of Hanukkah,[68] and is the date later chosen to celebrate Christmas.[75][79]
Some say that the last 10 days of the year (from Dec 21 to Dec 31) were designated as feast days around the birth of Jesus Christ.
Julius Caesar's New Calendar in 46 BCE
| Numa's | Month | Name |
| Month # | Name | Reason |
| # | Name | |
| 11 | January | god: Janus |
| 12 | February | februa (purification) |
| 1 | March | god: Mars -Year begins |
| 2 | April | aperir (to open) |
| 3 | May | goddess: Maia |
| 4 | June | goddess: Juno |
| 5 | July | emperor: Julius Caesar |
| 6 | August | emperor: Augustus Caesar |
| 7 | September | none |
| 8 | October | none |
| 9 | November | none |
| 10 | December | none |
Years
Everyone knew that the four seasons repeated over and over again, and this period of almost exactly 365 days was called a year. People measured long periods of time in years. Most people knew how many years ago some event happened or how many years they had lived. They said that the latter is their age. A North American Indian (Aboriginee) might say that "He/she has seen 25 winters.", meaning that his/her age is 25. Some people, those who seriously studied the sky, knew that the Sun rose in a slightly different position of the Zodiac each day. Between 10,000 and 4,000 years ago, the ancient people in Britain knew this and created Stonehenge (more later) to celebrate the summer and/or winter solstices. The summer solstice is the day of the year when the Sun rises in the point on the horizon that is the most northern at dawn. On this day, the Sun (almost) always seems to visit the same place in the same sign of the Zodiac. (But this does vary; very very slowly. Over hundreds of years the sun rises on the day of the Summer Solstice in a different sign of the Zodiac. This is called the "precession of the equinoxes". Perhaps you have heard that we are slowly moving from the "Age of Pisces" into the "Age of Acquarius".) In 2013, the Sun rose in the constellation known as Pisces, as can be seen in the image below:
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Vernal Equinox, March 20, 2013
Twice a year, the number of daylight hours is identical to the number of hours during the night. In the spring this day is called the "vernal equinox" and in the fall it is called the "autumnal equinox".
Celebrating the Solstices and the Equinoxes
Stonehenge in England was one of the earliest sites built to celebrate an astronomical event. It is not known exactly when Stonehenge was built, but this magnificent man-made assembly of rocks was definitely built to celebrate and predict the annual summer solstice. The author has enjoyed a vist to Stonehenge 3 times, the first time in 1965.
If proven true, Source 7, an astrology web-site, would be accurate when it says that:
"A current controversial dating of the stones at Karahundj [in present day Armenia] predates England's Stonehenge. They predate the Babylonian's claim to being the first astronomers, and they confirm what some people already suspect: that Armenia is the birthplace of the zodiac, and perhaps the beginning of navigation and the concept of time....... around 7000 BC"
However, Source 8 says that most of the information in Source 7 is unproven and ends with the statement:
. . . . . . As a consequence, González-Garcia concluded that the archaeoastronomical claims for the site are untenable, although further investigations to determine the astronomical potential of Carahunge and similar sites are merited.
How many days in each month?
Each group of 12 months (12 x 29.5 days = 354 days) was probably thought to be a year, as if the moon were exactly synchronized with the seasons, but it wasn't and isn't. They eventually discovered that there were 11 (365 minus 354) extra days to be dealt with. By the 8th century BCE, the Romans were using the calendar of Romulus which began with the month Martius (March) that had 31 days. After March, each month had 30 days, then 31 etc alternating. The last two months, November and December were assigned 30 days in the Romulus calendar to give it 304 calendar days plus some winter days. The Romulus calendar was officially only 304 days long. In 725 BCE, King Numa approved his new calendar as described above. One reason that Numa's calendar was better than the Romulus calendar is that Numa had 355 days and the winter days were assigned months and month names. Some 800 years later, the two Roman emperors, Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar wanted to have the 5th and 6th month named after each of them. They also wanted these months to have 31 days. To do this, two days needed to be removed from the other months. . . . So they juggled around the number of days in each month. Shown below is how each month was assigned its number of days. Knowing that the lunar month was 29.5 days, the Caesars' calendar tried to alternate between 30-day months and 31-day months. (Perhaps even-numbered months were no longer considered to be unlucky in Caesar's time.) Augustus Caesar didn't seem to care as much about alternating days per month. But Augustus Caesar certainly didn't want his month to have less days than Julius Caesar's month. Some of these thoughts are pure conjecture, but the number of days in each month has not been changed in about 2000 years. Today's calendar is still called the Julian Calendar.
Ever since King Numa, everyone knew that February had 28 days.
All Numa's months that had 31 days would retain 31 days
this applied to March, May, July, and October
Julius Caesar named July for himself already with 31 days
Augustus Caesar eventually named August and gave it 31 days
December and January were assigned 31 days 31 days
(the old Romulus calendar alternated 30 & 31 months)
The remaining 29-day months received 1 day giving them 30 days
they were April, June, September and November
Julius Caesar also decreed that each year whose number was divisible by 4 should have an extra day: February 29. I have greatly simplified this process . . . . actually it was extremely difficult for the scientists and heads of countries to understand this completely. It must have been even harder for them to all agree which months should be longer etc. It took thousands of years for the months and years to be correctly handled, counted or managed by society in general. But this revision (by Julius Caesar) resolved the problem so well that even today, some societies (such as the Orthodox Catholic Church) still adhere to this calendar, called the Julian calendar. Later in this article I will describe an eventual problem with the Julian calendar and how it was handled by Pope Gregory. It was handled without changing the number of days in any months.
Hours
Everyone could see that all 12 of the signs of the Zodiac appeared across the sky throughout the night, although only half of them were visible at any one time. People knew that the period of the night-time darkness was approximately the same as the period of daylight each day. (For people living near the equator, this was true all year long.) Everyone can see the sun travel across the whole sky each day. Imagine if you could see the 12 signs of the Zodiac moving across the sky each day just like they do at night. The sun might be hiding each of the 12 signs in the sky each day. (During an eclipse of the sun, the stars can actually be seen in the sky behind the eclipsed sun.) So we might conclude that the bright sun stops the 12 signs from being visible each day. Between eclipses (which is most of the time) you cannot see the signs of the Zodiac during the day, but they are certainly there. So, people probably decided to divide the daytime into 12 time periods, one for each sign "obscured" by the sun during the day. Each night was, of course, divided into a similar group of 12 time periods. Each of these time periods was eventually called an hour. These 2 Zodiacs that "crossed" the sky each day (and night) is probably why there are 24 hours in each day. Scientists or astronomers might argue with this explanation, but until another better explanation comes along, I will stick with this one.
Seconds
The notion of short periods of time is much more difficult to understand than years. Humans, like other similar animals, have beating hearts. Counting your heart-beats is called measuring your pulse. Anyone can sense their pulse by feeling the movement of blood pulsating through an artery on the wrist or neck. An alert person has a good idea of the length of time (or time period) between two successive heartbeats. Today, we know that a heartbeat is about 1 second long. But why did people decide to call it a second? I have never seen or heard an explanation, but I believe the following theory about the evolution of clocks:
First, we must "put our feet in the shoes of" some special people (living long ago) who wanted to know exactly what time it was. Perhaps they wanted to know when it was time for the next meal each day or if it was time to say their prayers or time to go to bed. People needed clocks, but clocks had not yet been invented. The first clocks were possibly sun-dials.
Sun-Dials
People who work and live out-of-doors notice that the shadow cast by a tree or pole moves all day long. One day, someone marked the end of a particular shadow on some flat ground all day long. He/she noticed that the shadow traced a curve on the ground. This curve was the first type of clock ever made. On clear nights, when a full moon shone down; its shadow followed almost exactly the same curve. Someone must have marked on the curve the 12 signs of the Zodiac that they saw every night. (The moon didn't visit all of these signs during the night but it was noticed that all 12 signs could be seen each night. This could be how the first hours originated. The moon didn't visit every sign each night as it traced half a circle through the sky. But the curve with the 12 signs of the Zodiac matched the full-circle that the moon (and sun's) shadow traced on the ground during the night-time and day-time part of each day. Each day the sun and then the moon appeared with the 12 signs of the Zodiac in the background. Tall trees or small poles produced exactly the same "shadow" curve. A Sun-Dial simply shows the shadow traced by the sun during the hours of daylight. People living near the equator witness days (or nights) that each have nearly 12 hours of daylight (or "nightlight"). Two Sun-Dials are shown below. The one on the left shows signs of the Zodiac in addition to the hours. Both Sun-Dials (below) also show the 4 compass points: North, East, South and West.
Improved Sun-Dials
As years went by, people found that it was more convenient if the time intervals between each of the 12 Zodiac signs on the SunDial were identical. There were other means of measuring time, such as the regular footsteps when an army marched. So people could tell when the time intervals on the "improved" SunDial were the same. These new markings on the SunDial didn't exactly match the widths of the signs of the Zodiac in the sky. But that didn't matter, this "improved" SunDial was much more useful than the original SunDial. The new markings used by the Arabs were simply labelled 1, 2, 3 . . . . .12. The Romans also used this type of improved SunDial but with Roman Numerals. For years and years, and even today, some clocks use Roman Numerals for the markings on their faces. This is why we see I, II, III, IV, V, VI . . . . XII on many clocks. Big Ben, in London, England, the most famous clock in the world, has Roman Numerals on its face. Most SunDials also show Roman Numerals on their faces. Builders of SunDials have found that the hours appear perfectly if the gnomon (pole) is slanted at a special angle depending upon where the SunDial is used. Unfortunately a SunDial that works well at one location doesn't always work well at another location; often this is because the latitude is different. Another disadvantage was that SunDials didn't work indoors, nor at night nor when it was cloudy.
Hourglass Clocks
Another type of clock eventually was invented that worked better than a SunDial. In this type of clock, grains of sand drop through a narrow opening from one glass container into a second similar glass container. Any exact period of time can be measured by putting the correct amount of sand in the top container. Once the correct amount of sand is placed in a glass container, both the top and bottom containers can be sealed. These first "glass" clocks measured exactly one hour, so they were called "Hour-Glass" clocks. After each hour, the hourglass must be turned over to begin timing the next hour. By doing this, it was possible to know the exact time or hour, 24 times per day. These Hour-Glass clocks worked well at most locations. Furthermore they worked at night and on cloudy days. But they were more expensive to build and they needed to be operated by someone, all day and night. Slaves were probably assigned to this job. (It is not known who first invented the Hour-Glass.)
Egg-Timers
Many kitchens have a smaller type of "hourglass" called an "Egg-Timer". Today's egg-timers measure 3 minutes, which is the approximate time that it takes to soft-boil a chicken's egg in boiling water . . . .
Water-Clocks
The Romans invented a different type of clock, known as a water-clock. In these clocks, water dripped into a cylinder. The rising water level in the cylinder slowly raised a float. The float raised a notched stick that turned a gear. The gear turned a needle. A
picture of a water-clock
appears at the beginning of this article. Some sophisticated models apparently had a clock-face (like a SunDial or a modern clock) with numbers 1 to 12 written around the face of the clock where a single needle indicated the hour. In those days, long ago, minutes had not yet been invented. It is not hard to imagine that some clock-maker added another hand to the face of the clock. This additional hand (or needle) was probably designed to make one revolution each hour. This additional hand might have existed before minutes were even considered. This additional hand would have easily shown "quarter after" or "half past" the hour. Perhaps this terminology began soon after this additional hand was added. Most people sleep at night, so this type of clock only needed to show the 12 hours during each day. People who lived far away from the equator found that summer days were longer than 12 hours, but this type of clock could be easily modified to display more hours.
Minutes
Probably, there was a "Eureka" moment when a [Sumerian?] mathematician noticed that there were approximately 3600 heartbeats in an hour. He would have remarked that 3600 was 60 squared. It would not have been a "big leap" for him to divide the clock-face into 60 intervals by separating each "hour" of the clock face into 5 divisions. These smaller intervals might have been called "minute" (ie diminutive) intervals. Of course, 5 divisions times the 12 "hour divisions" makes a total of 60 "minute" divisions per hour. Perhaps, one of those Romans made a water clock using drops of water that dripped at a rate of one drip per second, to match a human heartbeat.
Phil Molyneux, in the Guardian (Source 6) says that there are 60 minutes in an hour because the Sumerians used 60 as their number base. Perhaps the Sumerians (circa 3000 BC) used 60 as their number base because there are about 3600 heartbeats in an hour. (Which came first: the chicken or the egg?) In return, does Phil Molyneux know why the Sumerians used 60 as their number base? Historians tell us it is because 60 is divisible by so many small prime numbers. In fact, it appears that until the long division algorithm (calculation process) was discovered, the ancients used a system of approximations of the known fractions of 60. They used this system to generate many exact "digits (in base 60)" to the right of what we call the decimal point. For their method to work well, it was important to use a number base that had many divisors. . . . a number such as 60. To this day, we still count 360 degrees in a circle, 60 minutes in a degree, 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute. Ancient astronomical calculations concerning the Solar System probably presumed that there were 360 days in a year. So their calculations probably used a circle made up of 360 degrees.
In Wikipedia, the definition of Sexagesimal (a number system with a base of 60) mentions that Plato's Republic Book VIII mentioned 60^4 (which is 12960000.) In Source 11, page 213, George A. Barton mentions Plato's Nuptial Number which Hultsch (and Adam) believes is (36x100)^2 = 12960000. Ancient astronomers, such as Hipparchus (190–120 BC) and Ptolemy, knew about the precession of the equinoxes. By their "spectacular" calculations, the cycle of this precession was less than 36,000 years which is equal to 12960000 days (assuming 360 days/year). Today, Wikipedia tells us that this cycle time is actually 25,772. It should also be noted that 60^4 is 10000 when written in base 60. Many cultures, e.g. Chinese, treat 10000 [in base 10] (i.e. a myriad) as being "a very very big number". Using base 60, 10000 represents a value over 12 million in base 10.
Seconds
It was then very easy for this (or a subsequent) clock-maker to add another hand to the mechanism. This "third" hand could make use of exactly the same divisions on the clock as the minute divisions. In this way, every heartbeat could be easily counted as this last hand moved from one minute division to the next. All that was needed was to give a name to this last interval, the smallest interval of time for this new clock. The "minute" was the name of the FIRST small interval of time. Perhaps the next smaller interval of time was simply called the SECOND small interval. But one thing is certain . . . this second interval would be approximately equal to the length of a heartbeat. Around 1000 years ago, an Arab named al-Biruni may have been the first person who wrote about this time interval. In Source 3 below, we see that he called it a "second" in Arabic. At least one ancient culture divided a second into 60 intervals (perhaps called a THIRD) and an even smaller interval by dividing again by 60.
It was decided, in some way similar to this, that there should be 60 minutes in each hour and 60 seconds in each minute. So, once minutes and seconds had been defined by clock dials, everyone could forget about a second being approximately the length of a heartbeat. (I feel that we should have called a second a "beat"; in keeping with the fact that we call 12 inches on a "non-metric" (an American) ruler a "foot".)
Wikipedia states that today, around 2015 CE, a normal human heartbeat happens once every 0.8 seconds. This corresponds to a pulse rate of 75 beats per minute. Measure it yourself.
In Source 4, Wikipedia states:
The second became accurately measurable with the development of pendulum clocks keeping mean time (as opposed to the apparent time displayed by sundials). In 1644, Marin Mersenne calculated that a pendulum with a length of 39.1 inches (0.994 m) would have a period, at one standard gravity, of precisely two seconds, one second for a swing forward and one second for the return swing, enabling such a pendulum to tick in precise seconds.
(Click on this photo to enlarge it.)
grandfather clock
In 1670, London clockmaker William Clement added this "seconds" pendulum to the original pendulum clock of Christiaan Huygens.[Source 5] From 1670 to 1680, Clement made many improvements to his clock and introduced the longcase or grandfather clock (shown above) to the public. This clock used an anchor escapement mechanism with a seconds pendulum to display seconds in a small subdial. This mechanism required less power, caused less friction and was accurate enough to measure seconds reliably as one-sixtieth of a minute than the older verge escapement. Within a few years, most British precision clockmakers were producing longcase clocks and other clockmakers soon followed. Thus the second could now be reliably measured. I am surprised that the length of the 2-second pendulum was not adopted as the definition of 1 meter. Perhaps it originally was. . . and then was redefined by someone else using another way to measure it.
Wikipedia, my favorite source, says that today's meter was originaally defined as follows:
. . . . . in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth's circumference is approximately 40000 km.
The earth's circumference has been measured, in today's meters, as being 40,075 km, an error of only .00187% . Using the 2-second pendulum length would have produced a slightly bigger error of .006% (only 3 times as much of an error). But the pendulum would have needed a very precise means of measuring time. In those days (around 1800), was it easier to precisely measure a second or a great circle around the earth? I might ask the same question for these days.
Scientific Definition of a Second
Source 3 states that:
In the year 1000 CE, the Persian Muslim scholar al-Biruni first used the term second in Arabic and defined it as 1⁄(86,400) [that is, 1/(24 × 60 × 60] of a mean solar day.
In 1960, the definition of a second was made more precise by adding the words "of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time." Seven years later, the second was redefined very precisely in terms of the radiation of the caesium-133 atom.
Numbering the Years
In ancient literature, the years were numbered by stating something like "In the 13th year of the reign of King Alfred IV . . .". This was one way of specifying an exact year. Historians have worked hard to know exactly which year is meant in each case. But the best way to number years has been to choose a certain special event (or epoch) and call it year 0. Then a specific year can be identified by specifying the number of years before or since that date. Most countries have agreed to use the birth of Jesus Christ as being the certain special event. It has been recorded that Christ was born during a specific year of the reign of King Herod. Two years before that specific event is specified as 2 BCE [Before The Christian Era]. It is interesting to read the above-mentioned article (Source 14) which back-calculates the Star of Bethlehem to have ocurred in 2 BCE. Was today's definition of 0 BCE set according to ancient records of reigns of kings including King Herod. Or was today's definition of 0 BCE set by believing the record of a description of the unique "Star of Bethleham" that occurred an exact number of years ago that can be exactly calculated by todays scientists? Who knows? Does it matter? What do 2 years matter when the event was 2000 years ago. LOL
Four hundred years after that event is 400 CE (Christian Era) which was formerly 400 AD (Anno Domini which means "in the year of our lord" in Latin). When little confusion exists, we normally omit the CE or AD designation. Non-Christian countries such as China and maybe Israel probably use a different special event as their epoch year 0.
Computer Time
Some computer systems account for time differently. Operating Systems such as Unix (and subsequently Linux) use Jan 1, 1970 at Greenwich, England as the 0 time (ie the Unix epoch). Therefore a Unix timestamp (UTC) specifies the number of seconds since or before the beginning of that year. Negative values of UTC refer to time before the Unix Epoch. The current UTC in November 2015 is 1447658244 which is the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch. Nowadays, most computer operating systems understand the Gregorian calendar, and use the internet to synchronise themselves with a central world clock. Computers equipped with GPS (or with access to the web) can easily know in which Time-Zone they are located. Of course, software exists to convert Unix time to our normal (Gregorian) calendar and time.
Julian Calendar
The Julian Calendar is defined as:
A calendar introduced by the authority of Julius Caesar in 46 BC, in which the year consisted of 365 days, every fourth year having 366 days. After hundreds of years, the Julian calendar was superseded by the Gregorian calendar though the Julian calendar is still used by some Orthodox Churches. Dates in the Julian calendar are sometimes designated “Old Style.”
Gregorian Calendar
The Gregorian Calendar is defined as:
The Gregorian calendar reformed the Julian calendar because the Julian calendar introduced an error of 1 day every 128 years. The Roman Catholic church knew that an adjustment was necessary because Easter was occuring later in the spring season as the years went by. . . . especially after more than 15 centuries. The introduction of the Gregorian calendar (by Pope Gregory in 1582) allowed for the realignment with astronomical events like equinoxes and solstices, however a number of days had to be dropped when the change was made.
The switch from Julian to Gregorian
The Gregorian calendar (named after Pope Gregory) was first adopted in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain in 1582. The Gregorian reform
consisted of the following changes:
i 10 days were dropped in October 1582.
ii New rules were set to determine the date of Easter.
iii The rule for calculating Leap Years was changed to include that a year is a Leap Year if:
- The year is evenly divisible by 4;
- If the year can be evenly divided by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless;
- The year is also evenly divisible by 400. Then it is a leap year.
Is there a perfect calendar?
Was February 30 ever a real date?
For example, the years 1900, 2100, and 2200 are not Leap Years. However, the years 1600, 2000, and 2400 are Leap Years.
The Julian calendar is currently (between the years 1901 and 2099) 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar because too many Leap Years were added. The Gregorian calendar [will be] off by about 1 day every 3236 years.
Switching to the Gregorian Calendar
The Gregorian calendar would not be adopted until much later in Great Britain, the British Commonwealth and America. It wasn’t until September 1752 that 11 days were dropped (in these countries) to switch to the Gregorian calendar.
New Years Day
Most of us (who use the Gregorian calendar) celebrate the beginning of each year on January 1. But this was not always the case. In Roman times (or even earlier), when the months were initially numbered, we see that Month 1 began in March perhaps on March 1. This was probably considered the beginning of the Spring season. Between 1582 and 1752, in England, the first day of the year was considered by some to be January 1; and by others to be March 25. Much confusion in the recording of dates was possible, every year, during this period of the year. To avoid confusion, between 1582 and 1752, in England, the year was often written as 1648/9 or 1648[9] for dates between January 1 and March 25.
Lady Day
From 1155[6] until 1752, the first day of each new year was March 25, known as Lady Day. This corresponded to the religious event known as the Annunciation. The Annunciation was when Mary was told that she would give birth to Jesus on Dec 25, nine months later. (This date happens to be very near March 21 which is the vernal equinox.) After 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was introduced in England, January 1 became the first day of each year, although taxes continued to be reckoned as of March 25 for years thereafter.
Written in the 1600s or 1700s, the following article about Charles I shows issues about when each new year began:
Charles I was executed on Jan 30 1648/9. In England, between 1100 and 1751, the beginning of each new year was always March 25, known as Lady Day. But, after 1582, when the Gregorian calendar was implemented elsewhere, for taxation purposes in England, each new year [still] began on March 25, also known as Lady Day. But for many in England, January 1 started to be used as the beginning of the year. So for many years, there was some ambiguity about the number of the year during this early part of the year. Charles I was executed on Jan 30, 1649 AD. But official government records might record this date as Jan 30, 1648. To avoid all misunderstandings, an historian could write: `Charles I was executed on Jan 30 1648/9`.
Segar published a pedigree [Source 9] named Genealogie of .... William Cole .... in 1630. On page 29 line 14 he wrote `Thomas, baptised 15 January, 162½` where the ½ is represented by a single printed character. Such dates can also be written using normal keyboard characters as `Thomas, baptised 15 January, 1621/2`.
In 1867, James Edwin-Cole published an updated version [Source 10] of Segar's work.
The Leap Second
Because the Earth's rotation speed varies in response to climatic and geological events, UTC leap seconds are irregularly spaced and unpredictable. Insertion of each UTC leap second is usually decided about six months in advance by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), to ensure that the difference between the UTC and UT1 readings will never exceed 0.9 seconds. For more information refer to Source 12.
The Rise and Fall of Astrology
This article has introduced many concepts of astronomy. With time, as some (mathematical) people understood more and more about the night-time sky, they were able to predict the motion of the moving stars, the planets. This ability to predict the future was a wonder to normal citizens. The star-watchers became the oracles of the future. Some religions developed around star-watchers who become religious leaders. Other star-watchers became fortune-tellers for individual citizens. . . . . they became known as astrologers. These astrologers used astronomy to predict the future based on the repetitive patterns in human lives and the parallel patterns in the heavens. These astrologers could predict planetary movements with certainty. To the wonder of their subjects, the astrologers were able to guide their subjects to take actions that followed the movements of the planets. In this way these astrologers used their certain knowledge of the stars to heavily influence the lives of their subjects. The artificial "wisdom" of these astrologers was viewed as an ability to predict the future. Therefore astrologers and people like them rose to great power in many civilizations. Image the wonder when your "religious" leader predicted an eclipse of the moon. . . . not to mention the occasional temporary eclipse of the sun! Astrology based on the certain mathematics of astronomy permitted some astrologers to acquire powerful religious powers. It took 2000 to 4000 years for whole populations to learn and accept enough science to debunk astrology. Even today, after the year 2000, some people still believe the horoscopes produced by astrologers. Thankfully, most of today's religions accept science and astronomy, but not astrology.
Conclusion
This article has described a plausible way for having defined the following: Days, Months, Years, "Half Moons", Weeks, Hours, Minutes and Seconds. Also a probable evolution of the names of the months and weekdays has been included. It is impressive that our knowledge of astronomy, science and mechanics has enabled us to travel to the moon and back. The Internet, GPS satellites and the International Space Station are in common use. Furthermore, as of 2020, our next frontier seems to be the planet Mars.
External References (Sources)
(Where possible, www is a weblink to the original source; the second weblink leads to a copy of the information that I have preserved.)
The webmaster makes copies of webpages, as well as a weblink to the original source because so much information gets lost on the web after one or more years because a website dies or because subpages are moved and the original weblink no longer exists even if web indices such as Google still list them. Source 15 is an interesting archive of old web pages called the Wayback Machine.
Sources
Video Sources
Video Source 1: www 
Stonehenge Revisited in 2021
YouTube 2021
Web Sources
Web Source S101:01: www 
Cardiac Cycle
Wikipedia 2015
Web Source S101:02: www
Gregorian Calendar
2015
Web Source S101:03: Book:
al-Biruni (1879). The chronology of ancient nations: an English version of the Arabic text of the Athâr-ul-Bâkiya of Albîrûnî,
or "Vestiges of the Past". Sachau C Edward. pp. 147–149. 1879
Web Source S101:04: www
Wikipedia:second
2015
Web Source S101:05: Book:
"The Long Case Clock: Engineering Behind a Grandfather Clock". Illumin 1: 1. by Jessica Chappell (Oct 1, 2001).
Web Source S101:06: www
Why are there 60 minutes in an hour?
Phil Molyneux, before 2015
Web Source S101:07: www
Karahundj is older than Stonehenge An astrology site
Web Source S101:08: www
Carahunge was not an astronomy site
Wikipedia: comment by Gonazlez-Garcia in 2014
Web Source S101:09: www 
Genealogie of .... William Cole .... by Sir William Segar in 1630
Web Source S101:10: www
Genealogy of the Family of Cole . . . . 
by James Edwin-Cole
Web Source S101:11: www
On the Babylonian Origin of Plato's Nuptial Number by George A. Barton
Web Source S101:12: www
The Leap Second at Wikipedia 2020
Web Source S101:13: www
Why Are There Only 28 Days in February by Lucas Reilly on 2017BFeb01
Web Source S101:14: www
Dec 25 the date of Christmas in WikiPedia
Web Source S101:15: Wayback Machine by The Internet Archive (discovered in July 2020 and not yet explored adequately.)
NB I found coledavid.com as of 2001CMar02 (earliest)
NB I found coledavid.com as of 2003BFeb16
WebMaster: Ye Old King Cole
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Date Written : 2015 K Nov 16
Last Updated: 2023 H Aug 08
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