this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Ehhhh, no. There are very important reasons we divide the time this way. 24 is a highly composite number (a number with more divisors than all numbers preceding it; like an opposite of a prime number). This allows us to easily divide the day into halves, thirds, quarters and sixths. So is 60, with even more divisors.

My guess is the same thing goes for the switch from Roman to Julian calendar (ten to twelve months in a year).

Interestingly, the same goes for 360 degrees in a full angle.

[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The history of the calendar in Roman times is actually an entire topic to itself.

The pre-Julian calendar required fine tuning every year in winter to keep the rest of the months aligned with the seasons.

Technically not a difficult job to keep the calendar running smoothly and consistently, but the person in charge of the calendar in Rome was a politician, so they would play political games with the length of the year.

Caesar wanted a calendar that would run on auto-pilot to strip power away from those politicians.

By sheer coincidence when Caesar made his reform, during the the changeover of calendars while he was in charge, he got to rule over a 400+ day long year.

[–] Misconduct@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ahhh. This is it. This is the good stuff. Lemmy is really coming along I missed this.

[–] xx3r@lemmy.studio 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

We should have a base 12 metric system but the French already established the 10

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, the French, however, have a rather twisted counting system based on 20, for example 96 in French is translated as 4 times 20 + 16, forcing you to do calculations just to say a number.

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

I mean you only have to do calculations if you're used to base10. If you're used to base20 then it should come just as naturally as base10. Reading through the Wikipedia page, the linguistic remenants really suggest that it did come quite naturally.

Changing bases is actually really cool and can be useful if you ever want to play with big numbers on paper and make the comprehendable!

[–] Yoz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Thank you :) I love how lemmy has all the smart people.

[–] Imgonnatrythis@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So make it 24 then. What's this 12shit?