When, how and why did we decide that the day should start from midnight instead of 6am?

Question

When, how and why did we decide that the day should start from midnight instead of 6am?

In: 13

Answer 1

It probably became more common as people migrated away from the equator, where sunrise and sunset were more consistent, as were the lengths of days.

Time itself, though, continued to be fairly arbitrary until the development of the railways. Because trains would arrive and leave at a specific time, everyone needed to know what that time was, hence the whole of the UK ran to a clock determined from Greenwich in London.