On 4/5/11 7:38 PM, Greg Broburg wrote:
The number 6 and derivations thereof were presented
to the world of science from the numerologists. Time
was arranged as parts of a day, 24 hours 60 minutes
per hour 60 seconds per minute. Very tenuous at best.
I propose that we consider 100 seconds in a minute,
100 minutes in an hour, and 10 hours in a day. People
could handle that with an IPhone ap, right?
Then there's the Babylonians, who used a number system where 60 was
important. 60 has lots of factors, which makes dividing things up into
equal sized chunks easy. (as my daughter said when much younger, and
doing fractions in math, "curse those Babylonians").
The fact that a year is about 360 days long (6*60) also feeds into it.
You really needed the invention and adoption of place value for a
decimalized system to work well, and that didn't come along til around
700-800 C.E., I think. By then, the fractional measurement approach and
customary units were well entrenched. Sure, although King John
standardized the yard and inch and pound and such in the 1200s, I'm sure
that the units themselves were already in use for a long time. Currency
is also done in a fractional system (pieces o'eight, 12pence/shilling
with ha'pennies to boot)
The French *did* have a decimalized calendar (and time, too, I think).
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