Who invented time as we know it?

Question

Here i am sat at work with one of my co workers and we were wondering, Who invented time? not time zones but time itself. help. who did decide that 60 seconds is 1 minute and who decided that 60 mins is 1 hour and who decided 24 hours is one day i think you get the picture now.

Answer 1

Hi Scott,

the first 'time period' to be established was entirely unaided by man. That, of course was the day, which went from light to dark with the rising of the sun. Second, of course, was the night.

As one of your other 'answerers' has pointed out, the Babylonians and Egyptians were among the first to break down the day into workable (and measurable) smaller units.

Other time measures, such as months were, again, entirely natural and were measured by the phasing of the moon (from which we get the word 'month'.

Modern hours, minutes, seconds etc. began when man was able to manufacture reliable counting equipment as an improvement on the primitive 'candle clocks' and 'water clocks' that had been developed by the Egyptians. Astronomy (and Astrology) gave us the 'year' and the modern names for the months. etc.

It is known, however, that many ancient civilisations, including the Mayans and their 52 year cycles of time, were adept at predicting astronomical events with tremendous accuracy.

Hope that helps,

BobSpain

Answer 2

A quick answer to part of your question: Babylonians were responsible for refining the accurate measurement and description of time, and probably for the 12 month, 24 hour day, 60 minute, 60 second standard. It is developed from astronomy - a year is (approximately) 12 moon cycles (mo(o)nths). (A year being judged by the growth cycle of crops, or the flooding of the Euphrates / Tigris - more or less the same thing). 12 and 60 are useful numbers for quick calculation - 12 gives a whole number as an answer if it is divided by 2, 3, or 4 - so half a day, a third of a day ( still used in 8 hour shifts or watches in places where people work "24/7" ) or a quarter of a day are easily counted.
60 is 5 x 12, so dividing an hour into 60 minutes gives easily countable periods of time - 5 mins is one twentieth of an hour - quarter of an hour is 15 mins - etc.
Similarly with dividing minutes into seconds.
As to what time is, and whether we do know it - you need to talk to philosophers and metaphysicians. 'Invented' isn't really a term that applies.

Of course Babylon is now Baghdad - doesn't time fly!

Answer 3

Well.

Galileo was sat in a church once listening to the sermon and was -to be frank- bored. His hand was resting on his wrist and he noticed the beat of his pulse. Galileo began to lightly tap his foot to the pulse and, although he pulse varied, he tried to time the lengths of the pulses by using the lines of a song. With this, he was able to divide up the number of seconds into an average of 60 second minutes. Then, he mapped out the changes of his shadow later that day, and marked the changes in feet, and eventually found a pattern of roughly 60 minutes per foot. These came to be called hours. Then, he mapped out the changes in his shadow until it did a full circle and came back to him. Only problem was, this only took 12 hours. But using his common sense, he worked out that one full day was 12 hours of light, and 12 hours of dark.

This is, as legend tells us, is how recording time was invented.

But if you know anything about Romans, you'll know that they had 23 hour days, and they too must have developed some concept of time.

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

civilization one! (get the book or check it out on the net)
A certain proffessor thom found that many ancient monuments around the world used a standard measurement, but could not understand how such a degree of accuracy could be in use around the world. Research found that monuments such as stone henge were used to measure time.
Basically, two sticks are used to mark the suns shadow and from there a length of string can be cut to make a pendulum.
The duration of the swing is the second, the distance travelled
is the megalithic yard. A certain division of the yard cubed makes the megalithic pint...... (all from memory, not got the exact details with me!) Apparently the french metric system is based on the same principal, or at least uses the same second. There are 366 degrees in a circle, but 366 is an awkward number to use, so we shortened it to 360. Making 360 seconds into 1 hour. Check out the book mentioned above and also (compelling reading) uriels machine. The masons did it! (sorry its late at night and i can't offer a more coherent answer than that at the mo!) Bet no one else will tell you that, so give us best answer please!!!!!!?????

Answer 5

To further "bob spain's" answer, our modern months names actually come from the Roman calendar of 10 months (sept, 7, oct, 8, nov, 9, december, 10) which origionally had a 360 day year and a 40 day month, with 2 months later added (august and july for augustus and julius ceasers) and some named after thier gods (january, janus, march, mars, etc). The romans chose these numbers as they seemed to fit perfectly, why 10? well simple, we count in units of 10 as we have 10 fingers... daft but reasonable hypothesis from mathmeticians. and why 360? it is a mathmatically perfect number that seemed to fit, though with time they must have realised their year was shifting by a few days each time.

The ancient britons had the most reliable calender even before the romans though, they built Stone Henge, this gave them the first ever 365 day year to follow the summer and winter solstices. clever guys that they were they still missed out leap years, a hiccup that our planet takes an extra few hours each year to orbit the sun.

Finally though historians now believe that the Great pyramids, in Egypt, are an even earlier record of time being matched up with not the sun, but the stars, they line up perfectly with the stars of orions belt, these are believed to have been built even before stone henge and before the great egyptian civilisation that is now well known, by an earlier egyptian people with an equal technology to that of the pharos time.

Answer 6

The builders of Stonehenge had a very good understanding of the way that time worked.
Their Priests would watch the movement of the sun and moon so therefore work out the pattern of the day.They also watched the seasons change with the changes of the position of the sun in the sky,lower for the winter months and higher for the summer months for example.
By following the positions of the sun during the day they then worked out the first usable calender,and clock which was pretty accurate.
So I would say that the builders of Stonehenge were the inventers of time,or rather using time for every day life.

Answer 7

Who Invented The Hour

Answer 8

Exactly time measure. At first time people only realize a day by once time sun rise and down. Then....

The 12-hour clock originated in Egypt. However, the lengths of their hours varied seasonally, always with 12 hours from sunrise to sunset and 12 hours from sunset to sunrise, the hour beginning and ending each half-day (four hours each day) being a twilight hour. An Egyptian sundial for daylight use[2] and an Egyptian water clock for nighttime use found in the tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep I,[3] both dating to c. 1500 BC, divided these periods into 12 hours each.
(wikimedia)

In Asian, they have been using 12 phase / day with 12 animal symbol.

Answer 9

Hello,

The first measurement system that turned into our modern one was created by the Sumerian civilisation in approximately 2000 BC. They used an Sumerian Sexagesimal System based on the number: 60. 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour.

Well now it is not hard to explain the Sexagesimal system but you can search this type of measurement on the web for more details.

By the way there are many types of time: psychological time (when it appears to us it goes faster or slower), real time, space time.

bye.

Answer 10

Who invented time?

The same guy that invented life


Who invented time telling techniques?

The ancient Babylonians were the first to tell time in minutes, hours, etc. Their number system revolved around base 60 hence we have 60 seconds to a minute and 60 minutes to an hour.

Answer 11

The advent of reliable instruments to measure time coincided ( necessity is the mother of invention) with the birth of the industrial era.

Agricultural societies could measure time by the changing of the seasons because this was sufficient for their needs. After the industrial revolution, as people began to work in large factories, it became necessary for time to be measured more accurately so that poor sods like myself wouldn't have a decent excuse for being late for my boring job.