Clocks were sundials.
If you can see the time, it’s not night.
100% This.
Also, being an evolution of sundials is the reason all analog clocks move their hands in the same direction.
*Being evolution of sundials located on the northern hemisphere.
So you’re saying clockwise can also be called sundialwise?
Or just sunwise
I present to you, illuminated clocks!
crowd gasps MY UNIVERSE IS COLLAPSING the crowd starts screaming and lighting things on fire
…and then they noticed: “Damn, we could have lit everything on fire and seen our clocks in the night time millenia ago!”
Your sundial still isn’t showing time.
It’s showing a time
I think their point was they picked 12 and not 24 or some other number to divide a circle by
That’s a Babylonian thing. They were obsessed with highly divisible numbers like, 12, 24 and 60. Basically the opposite of prime numbers, which are super annoying to divide. Babylonians wanted their numbers to as nice as possible when dividing. For example, 60 is particularly nice since it’s not absurdly large, but when dividing it, you have lots of options.
All of this was long before the decimal point and calculators were invented, so divisibility was a big thing back then. Nowadays though, having weird fractions like that is more inconvenient and annoying than nice. Thanks to the Babylonians, we have super messy time units now.
Thanks to the Romans, we also have super messy units for length, weight, volume and money. Yes, even money had convoluted fractions. That’s not a huge deal though, since basically nobody uses those any more.
I still don’t know why everyone doesn’t just use the 24-hour clock. It’s so much easier.
It’s like someone had doubts people could count much past 12, so just had them do that twice. Or maybe Big Clock didn’t want to manufacture 24 hour faces and sold the lie.
As for the clock face, a 12 hour face is much easier to read at a glance or from a distance.
It’s like someone had doubts people could count much past 12
More like the people who invented a lot of shit used base 12.
Things restarting at 12, is because the thing is so old, it predates base 10.
Like, pick a language, count to thirteen:
Ein, zwei, drei, fire, funf, sechs, seben, acht, neun, zein, elf, zwolf, dreizein…
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen…
Notice how 11 and 12 aren’t one-teen and two-teen?
On each hand is 4 sets of 3 knuckles, touch your thumb to each knuckle and your finger counting on one hand higher than we can with two. Pretty sure there’s some pretty neat math tricks with their method too, almost like built in abacus.
But all this is off memory.
More like the people who invented a lot of shit used base 12.
I thought we got it from the Babylonians, turns out we actually got it from the Ancient Egyptians.
Nope, it’s just down to how many “decans” you could see at any one point during the night.
Ein, zwei, drei, fire, funf, sechs, seben, acht, neun, zein, elf, zwolf, dreizein…
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen…
Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi, kuusi, seitsemän, kahdeksan, yhdeksän, kymmenen, yksitoista, kaksitoista, kolmetoista…
(though, notice that our words for “eight” and “nine” are derived from those for “two” and “one”. We used base 8 before migrating to Europe and applying the local standard. Then it was "two left until the new ten and “one left until the new ten”
With base 8 you can use your fingers to count up to 24 because you can use your thumbs for marking the “tens”. Or to 32, but that already takes a little bit of an effort because from my perspective your left thumb is on the right.)But yeah, base 10 is the worst. 12 can be divided by 3 without problems. And base 8 allows counting far higher with just fingers.
I dont like the look of the numbers
one thing that I’m proud of my team at work for is just defaulting to using 24hr time when adding timestamps to filenames. I require datestamps, but there are no rules on timestamps if there are multiple files for that day. and a few of them just started appending the time in 24 hour format. I was so proud.
AM/PM time is another thing that needs to sink with the USA, just like the Imperial system and Fahrenheit.
EU fella here. I’m strongly pro-Metric and yet don’t see a problem with 12-hour time. 24-hour is kind of clumsy to use in informal speech or chat/text, but I would use it in all other instances.
I use 24h all the time when speaking, never got strange gazes for doing so. And I never remember which one is midday and which is midnight on the 12-hour time.
Well… it depends on the language too - although I’m not a native English speaker, I would use 12-hour in spoken English too (like I would in my native Bulgarian) - often without even appending “AM” or “PM” because it would be obvious from the context.
What’s wrong with AM/PM lol. How many countries use 24h? Honesty, because I actua lly never thought about it before.
It’s extremely common in Europe. I regularly get messages with “15h”, “22h”, etc, but spoken is a bit of a mixed bag, you can usually use 12 hour time and know if it’s AM/PM from context, but sometimes you need to be specific.
Though the weirdest thing I’ve had to learn in Germany about time is, near where I live it’s common to say “one/three quarters [hour]”, instead of “quarter past/to [hour]”, so 10:15 is “one quarter 11”, and 10:45 is “three quarters 11”. It makes a little more sense when you know that “half 11” mean “half to 11”, not “half past” like is typical in English.
What is the logic for distinguishing 12AM vs 12PM? Also, you have double of every element and need 2 more sillables each to distinguish.
It’s confusing and inefficient.
Get rid of Daylight Savings Time first, then we’ll talk about 24 hour time.
I use 24 hour time all the time in my job, I also have to use the time zone. I’m good with converting right now.
Daylight savings… yeah burn it to the ground and a hex on those who implemented it.
Wartime. Don’t know why the hell they didn’t remove it.
TIL, I always knew it had something to do with farming but a little digging revealed that it was to allow farmers to extend their work day and to conserve fuel during WW1.
Well it’s been over 100 years since that war ended, I think we can safely remove daylight savings time now. I doubt Franz Ferdinand is going to be on any tours and I think The Kaiser is no longer a threat.
Hmmm 4 20
Wow, that’s cool! I’ve never even heard of a clock face like this before today. Definitely haven’t seen one, even as a mid-millenial.
beautiful
Hey, where are my fellow ISO-8601 fans?
REPRESENT.
Even in Canada I grew up with non-American time, thanks to German parents, and knew of AM/PM only via analog clocks and use outside of the home. I remember confusing the heck out of an elementary school teacher by giving an afternoon/evening time in proper units. She had to do the math (calculators still being hella rare in those days) to convert out of PM in order to see if I was correct or not.
Yes, because, you know, you can look outside most of the times.
12h clocks are 24h clocks if you just keep counting.
Honestly my mind has been tweaking lately ever since I started working. I’m under artificial lights all day long and sometimes I have no clue when I see “9:00” if it’s night or morning for at least 5secs. I really hate how my phone doesn’t show AM PM either.
Also using 24hrs clock really puts the time spent in the day into perspective. 9pm doesn’t look as daunting as “you’re 21hrs” into the day.
12 clock is easier to read at a distance.
Digital clocks handle 24 pretty well
I took a nap one time on a spring afternoon and woke up at 6:00. Only I wasn’t sure if it was afternoon or I slept all night until morning. Weird feeling.
I did this recently. I woke up at “sunrise”, had a cup of coffee, and it started getting darker outside. I was very confused for a few minutes.
Wow, am I the only person on lemmy to grow up before any digital clocks, where all the clocks were 12 hours ? Yes, yes I am
There are 24 hour analog clocks dude.
Of course, they exist. But, they are extremely uncommon. Maybe you see them in military context? In sixty years, I’ve never seen one except in a picture, and maybe a movie. Not like a digital clock, where on nearly every one you just change a setting.
Dude.
I see them all the time in different business I go into.
The first time I saw a 24 analog clock in the 1970s was on a tv show (Mash). Did not see another in real life for 30 years
