Who, how and when decided to count to a second and was like “Yup. This is it. This is a second. This is how long a second is. Everybody on Earth will universally agree that this is how long a second is and use it regardless of culture, origin, intelligence or beliefs”?
In: 1035
Dividing things by 12 and 60 were very common in early civilisations because these numbers can be easily divided by others. 12 can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12; and 60 can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 60.
They’re highly divisible numbers. Thats another reason why there are 360 degrees in a circle – it’s highly divisible.
So it’s not surprising modern Western timekeeping has its mathematical roots in ancient Babylonian astronomy, who were familiar with the divisibility of these numbers, and divided the movement of the Sun across the ecliptic into degrees, then into minutes and further into seconds (though not by these names).
The “day”, of course, is was naturally divided into two logical and useful periods – day and night.
And once again, the original time piece – the sundial – was the projection of a shadow from the sun on a circle.
Useful days, sunrise to sunset, were then formally divided by the ancient Greeks into 12 parts (and nights into three or four watches). That was usually accurate enough for the practical needs of the day. Divisions of the night into similar periods of 12 hours came later.
But, more accurate times were needed for specific purposes, so these hours were divided by ancient Rome, as the Babylonians did with astronomical time, into first divisions of 60 minutes, from the Latin “minutus” meaning “made small”.
Then, these first minute divisions were further divided into 60 second divisions, which gives us “seconds”; literally the second small part of an hour.
The actual length of a second of course, varied based on the latitude and time of year, because of the tilt of the earth making the daylight hours longer in summer and shorter in winter. Modern timekeeping standardises this so it remains constant.
Seconds last a “second” because if you divide a standard revolution of the Earth into 24 hours, then these hours into first divisions of 60 minutes, then each of these minutes into second divisions of 60 seconds each. These numbers were chosen because of their practicality and divisibility.
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