Skip to content
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Menu
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Happy News

Who Invented The 60-Minute Hour And Why It Was Genius

Every time you glance at a clock, you are using a mathematical idea invented more than 4,000 years ago, and most people have never stopped to wonder why. The reason there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour has nothing to do with modern science and everything to do with the ancient Babylonians, who built their entire number system around the number 60. They chose it for a reason that still holds up beautifully: 60 can be divided evenly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30, making it far more useful for calculations than the base-10 system we use today for almost everything else. In a world without calculators, being able to split an hour into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths and sixths without getting messy fractions was an enormous practical advantage for merchants, astronomers and engineers alike.

The path from Babylonian math to your watch face ran through several more ancient cultures. Greek astronomers later used this same base-60 system to divide circles into 360 degrees for mapping the sky, and when they subdivided those degrees into smaller parts for measuring latitude and longitude, they called the first division the partes minutae primae, meaning the first small part, which gave us the word minute. The second subdivision became the partes minutae secundae, the second small part, which is where the word second comes from. Meanwhile, the ancient Egyptians contributed the 24-hour day by dividing daylight and darkness into 12 parts each, using sundials by day and stars by night. The French tried to replace the whole system during their revolution with a clean decimal version featuring 10-hour days, but the world rejected it, and the 4,000-year-old Babylonian logic has held its ground ever since, ticking away on every device you own.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260320-the-ancient-reason-there-are-60-minutes-in-an-hour-and-60-seconds-in-a-minute

PrevPreviousArtists And Creators Celebrate As OpenAI Shuts Down Controversial AI Video Platform Sora
NextScience Just Explained Why Music Makes You Feel Closer To PeopleNext

Recent Articles

Happy News

Communities Across America Are Banning AI Data Centers And The Number Just Jumped From 8 To 78

May 10, 2026

According to the U.S. Data Center Moratorium Tracker, communities across the country have been pushing back against the rapid expansion of AI data centers with growing success, with the number of active bans and moratoriums jumping from just 8 in May 2025 to 78 today, including 50 active restrictions and

Read More
Happy News

An Alaska Animal Shelter Lets You Borrow A Dog For 48 Hours And It Is Leading To More Adoptions

May 10, 2026

The Anchorage Animal Care and Control shelter in Alaska launched a program in spring 2025 called Tails on Trails that has since become one of the most talked-about shelter initiatives in the country, pairing volunteers with a shelter dog for 48 hours and sending them out to explore the trails

Read More
Happy News

Scientists Gave Monkeys A Reward-Free Video Game And They Played Nearly 100 Rounds Anyway

May 10, 2026

Researchers at Kyoto University’s Institute for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior set out to test whether curiosity in Japanese macaques follows the same pattern observed in humans, and what they found should resonate with anyone who has ever gone down a late-night internet rabbit hole for no practical reason

Read More
« Previous Next »
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2026 HappyNews.