Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1880 — Hours and Minutes. [ARTICLE]

Hours and Minutes.

]. Why is one hour divided into sixty minutes, and each minute into sixty seconds? Why not divide sort une afire do our money, by tens, counting ten, or fifty, or one hundred minutes to an hoi® ? This Jnestion was asked by an intelligent boy a ‘w days since, and the answer given hi«fo may both interest and instruct other young people. The answer is this: Wehavnsixty divisions on the dials of out - cloefl’and watches, because the old Greek astronomer, Hipparchus, who lived in the second century before Christ, accepted the Babylonian system of reckoning time, that systefct being sex igesiinal. The Babylonians wepe < acquainted with the decimal system; but Jpr common and practical purposes, they counted by aosw and suri, the hums representing sixty, and the Vfttiy timed sixty, or thirty-six hundred.,. Ergen .fiippaichns, that mode of reckoning found its W into the works oTPtoleHtV? MW 150 Mrttejsrsjs a? st fbuud the way tO fhC M pkrteFw our docks and watches. ‘