Imperial or metric...

[pineapple stu]

I always wondered about the clock.
Is there any reason (astrological or other) why there is 24 hours in the day?

Dates back to Egyptian times, I think. They initially had 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night, no matter what season it was. The Babylonians changed it so there were 24 hours in a day. Read a book on this a while back - will dig it out and see what it says exactly. 12 signs of the zodiac, twelve months of the year (though the French did try and metricise that and the days of the week as well...), I think it just all tied in. 12 also has more factors than 10 (2,3,4,6 compared to 2 and 5), which made it far easier to divide without getting into fractions, which I think is why you have the likes of 12 inches in a foot, 12 pence in a shilling, etc.

[Peadar]

I always wondered about the clock.
Is there any reason (astrological or other) why there is 24 hours in the day?

The Tweleve Apostles had a huge pizza and cut it into 12 slices.
Jesus had a pizza to himself.
It took him from dusk 'til dawn to eat his pizza so they decided that night was 12 pizza slices long.
They repeated this experiment during the day, with the same conclusion and therefore decided that one cycle was 24 pizza slices.

[noby]

The Tweleve Apostles had a huge pizza and cut it into 12 slices.
Jesus had a pizza to himself.
It took him from dusk 'til dawn to eat his pizza so they decided that night was 12 pizza slices long.
They repeated this experiment during the day, with the same conclusion and therefore decided that one cycle was 24 pizza slices.

But, by your logic, they're all dead now, So from tomorrow we'll have 10 hours, made up of 100 centihours.

Now, if there was an option for 'both' on the poll...

[Peadar]

But, by your logic, they're all dead now, So from tomorrow we'll have 10 hours, made up of 100 centihours.

Why would the word hours be used?
That makes no sense!

[SÓC]

The Americian millitary use metric in the main afaik

[crc]

12 is considered to be a more 'elegant' number than 10 as there are more factors (as pointed out by pineapple stu), that's why there are twelve stars on the European flag (a number which will never change).

Rather than decimalise time, we should convert our number system to base 12, which would be much easier to use We would need two other digits to represent the new 10 and 11. We would count like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, t, e, 10.

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Also, some people are confusing decimal with metric. Metric is something that is derived from the metre (kg, litre, etc) whereas decimal is something based on the factor of 10. Therefore 0.001 pounds (lb) is decimal, but not metric, and 1/2 kg is metric but not decimal (unless expressed as 0.5 kg).

[pineapple stu]

I always wondered about the clock.
Is there any reason (astrological or other) why there is 24 hours in the day?

Said I'd look it up...!

Time In History by GJ Whitrow (far more interesting than it sounds!) says...

"The end of the night was marked by the heliacal rising of a particular star. However,...different heliacal risings occur throughout the year...[To time their nightly services in their temples] the Egyptian priests made a fresh choice every ten days, a period of time known as a "decan". Since the...year contained 365 days, there were 36 decans in the year (plus the five extra days at the end of the year), and the sky was divided accordingly. During the summer, only twelve of the divisions of the sky can be seen rising during the hours of darkness, and it was this that gave rise to the twelve-hour division of the night."

This meant the hour varied in length over the course of the year, and it was the Greeks who fixed the length of the hour using the Babylonian numerical system (based on six), and divided it up into 60 "firsts", each of which contained 60 "seconds". So the 24 hours is pretty much completely by chance, it seems!

What this is doing on a football forum, God only knows!