Show WHY minutes and hours came to be computed at sixty sixty seconds make a minute 60 minutes make an hour you used to say that as often as ou oil did 10 mills make a cent 10 cents make a dime and 10 dimes make a dollar it Is believed in fact certain learned men have said it has been praed that the scheme of dividing the hie hour leour into CO 60 parts and the minute into go CO parts was invented or devised by the ancient babylonians long centuries before the christian era it lg Is one of the ways of counting time hilch has gone unchanged during the past or years along with the decimal system in ancient chent babylon there was the system based upon the count by six sixties ties and originating in the discovery that there Is no number which has so many divisions as 60 for or it can be divided without a remainder by 2 3 4 5 C 10 12 15 20 and 30 babylonians divided the suns path into 21 24 paras angs d a being about four our and a half miles the astronomers tron omers of thae that time in babylon bab ion compared the pro progress grehs of the sun during one hour to tile the progress that would be made by a good walker in the same game length of time each going about one or four and one half miles thus thug the whole course of the sun so the wise ise astronomers of babylon thought paras angs or degrees or 24 hours and each phra sang or bour was divided into CO ajo parts which we call minutes the story Is that Hip the greek philosopher who lived a century and a half before christ introduced the babylonian hour into europe and we ae liae hae counted the time of day in seconds minutes and hours ever since |