Re: measuring time

On Friday, June 17, 2005, at 03:43 , # 1 wrote:


> But that's true I could use a hour-glass
But only if you have hours   :)

> But until now, I thought that subdivisions of a day were too hard to
> create
> for a people without technology but if they use a stick in the ground,
> watch
> the shadow, and divide the circle in equal parts
Which is precisely what the ancient did! They divided daylight into twelve
divisions. It meant that the length of hours differed at at different
seasons and at different latitudes.

>> Is there any particular reason not to take the obvious route, and
>> divide the day by numbers other than 24 / 60 / 60?
>
> Am I wrong if I think that the division in 24 hours is due to the facility
> to divide that number in 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12
Not entirely. The original division was by 12 only - hours of daylight
divided by twelve. Night-time was variously divided. The ancient Romans
for example simply divided darkess (night) into four more or less equal
watches. Later there were attempts to divide darkness into 12 hours, with
things like candles marked of to show the hours. But as the length of
hours varied at different times it was tricky  :)

The idea of having two sets of 12 equal length hours took some time to get
general acceptance and didn't become the norm until the adopton of
mechanical clocks.

> and that the division in 60
> minutes and seconds is due to the babylonians who counted in 60 (because
> that number can also be divided in more numbers)
Correct.

> If so, that division depends too much of historic events for my language
> that I want to be independant, that's the reason
Create your own historic events. At the time of the French Revolution,
when all the old weights and measures were swept aside and the metric
system introduced, there was an attempt to divide the day decimally - but
the older system was too entrenched.

However, when I was a teenager, I did adopt a decimally divided day just
for fun   :)

One time reference that does seem universal is noon - I don't mean 12.00
but true noon, i.e. when the sun is directly overhead. It also seems
fairly 'natural' to divide the pre-noon and post-noon periods into two
halves. some system like this would emerge:
morning - forenoon - afternoon - evening.
Thus daylight from sunrise to sunset is divided into four (like the old
Roman division of darkness).

If your non-technological people are happy with 'hours' of varying length,
  then an eightfold division of the day as outlined above might suffice. Of
course they could move towards a standard eight equal divisions marked by
an 'hour glass' or water-clock or marked candle etc. They could subdivide
into say 16 sub-divisions or whatever.

How do these people count? In tens, by dozens, in twenties or what? Surely
this would have some baring on how they divided day (and night).

Ray
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"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

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