Who came up with the idea that there are 24 hours in a day?

Question

Who came up with weeks?
Who came up with months?
Who came up with seconds?
Who came up with minutes?

Answer 1

It's pretty damn weird - But it went something like this:

In the early days of human civilization and mathematics there were 2 competing base systems. Base 10 and base 6.

People would count by raising their fingers. In base 10 (modern math) people would raise all 10 fingers, then close both hands and count 1 group of 10. In base 6 they would count to 5 on their right hand, then on the next count they would close it, and raise one finger on their left hand to count one group of 6.

Base 10 lets you easily divide by 2 & 5. Base 6 lets you divide easily by 2 & 3.

Now there were two large empires using different systems, I think is was the Babylonians and the Persians. Anyway one conquered the other and to smooth over the post unification conflicts, the leaders told the mathematicians to create a deci-hex system. I.e. count to 10 for the first digit, then six for the second, then back to 10 then back to 6 and so on.

A bit hard on the abacus crowd, but it made it easy to divide by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10; which was pretty cool back in the pre calculator days.

So seconds count to 10, then 6 groups of 10 equals a minute.

Minutes count to 10, then 6 groups of 10 make and hour.

Hours count to 10, but you can't fit six groups in a day.
20 hours would work, but you lose the ability to divide by 3 and six. So 24, or 2 groups of 12 makes a nice compromise.

Now the moon orbits the earth roughly 12 times a year, sweet.
Let's divide the year by 12. 365=12= 30.4
Now 30 is a great number, divides evenly by 2,3,4,5, & 6
Wahoo, we got our month.
Now a week could have wound up being 15, 10,8,7,6 or 5 days. I'm guessing the Romans wanted something in the middle and 7 goes into 365 better than 8 does.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

God Also known as Krishna, Allah, Jehovah, Vishnu, etc.) but man messed up the months in the west. The eastern calendar is correct it is based on the moons position. For all sciences which are accurate read srimadbhagavata go to srimadbhagavatam.org/...

Answer 3

i dont know who came up with these ideas. i know that most of our modern calendar and time system were created in the most ancient of civilizations but i dont have a specific name.

i do know that we base or records of time on the patterns of the moon's sun's and earth's rotations (in the case of the earth anyway) and revolutions.

Answer 4

All are based on astronomy except the week. Give credit to early man.

Answer 5

The Greeks.

Answer 6

somewhere along the line God decided he would make the earth spin around completely once every 24 hours (well, closer to 24.8 hours...) dunno about the other ones

Answer 7

yepp 3 pointer is right ;) as usual...

Answer 8

well ......
scientists............
and with many other things as well...............