Why do we hit a limit of 60 for seconds and minutes, but then decimal for hours and miliseconds?
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The system is ancient but has stuck around because 12 and 60 are *superior highly composite numbers*. Basically there are an unusually high amount of numbers that evenly divide into them which makes it super convenient. Hours is 12 btw (or 24 in some regions), not 10.
1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/10, 1/12, 1/15, 1/20, 1/30 all divide out nicely from 60. Compare to 10 which is just 1/2 and 1/5.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_composite_number#Examples
Milliseconds are in decimal because base 60 doesn’t actually make any sense to use at that scale. We would need 60 unique number symbols because of the infinite precision problem. Milliseconds and frankly our entire numerical system COULD have been in base 12 though and there’s a legitimate push to make that happen. Also base 6 which is again a *superior highly composite number* but mostly a meme movement because it’s called “seximal.”
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