Sunday, February 15, 2004
About time [60]
The Ancient Babylonians are responsible for the division of hours into sixty minutes and minutes into sixty seconds, because their mathematical system was based on the number 60. It's a good number to do maths with, having more factors than 100 - and in fact more factors than any other number less than 100. Their ancient civilisation has set the pattern of our modern lives. Whenever we "wait a minute" or "hang on a second", the time we wait was decided 4000 years ago by a bunch of Iraqis. See, they invaded us first.
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