Only noobs start counting at 1. Midnight = 24:00 = 00:00
The numbers on the clock actually make a lot of sense.
12, 24 and 60 are highly composite numbers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_composite_number).
Imagine using numbers in a world where most people have no real understanding of fractions.
That is also the reason why you see the same or similar numbers as common screen refresh rates. 24, 48, 60, 120 and 240.
The 12 hour clockface design is that way because it is a similar design to that of a sundial, so people did not need to learn a new way to read the time. This also meant that for readibility reasons it was beneficial to only have 12 numbers.
Surely you mean common refresh rates like 23.976Hz (NTSC), 25hz (PAL & ATSC), 50hz (PAL & ATSC), 59.95hz (NTSC), 100hz (PAL+) and 144hz, right? /s
Let’s just switch to metric time. https://metric-time.com/
Holy shit, that actually looks so neat and organized, I want it 😭
Clocks are based on sundials. The little hand roughly follows where a shadow would be. The rest is just what people agreed on made the most sense.
24 hours cause Egyptians split their sun dials and star decans into 12 parts each (probably cause 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6) which the greeks later turned into equal length hours (before the length would change over the year)
60 minutes due to Babylonian base-60 math
12 hour format is just tradition at this point, but derived from the sun dials which only worked at day, so half the time, and the star decans which only worked at night, so the other half.
pretty much every country except the US uses the 24h format on digitial clocks now
also the dude in the meme was kinda right: the day will be divided into 12 segments. and the night will too. at least originally
This all originated from the Ancient Sumerians btw. They passed it down to Babylonians.
Edit: A bit of history from what I learned from listening to Fall of Civilizations in the shower.
The Ancient Sumerians invented this sexagesimal system because if you look at your hand, you notice 12 knuckles (this is obviously excluding your thumb, as that is used for counting each knuckle), and with your other hand you will raise a single finger for every time you finish counting past 12 knuckles on your left hand. So raising your thumb is 12, thumb and index is 24, and so on, until you reach 60.
Came here to say this, you said it far better than I would have! Great addition with the edit.
24 hour analogue clocks exist. I have a 24 hour watch which only revolves once per 24 hours. It’s a disadvantage though.
The reason why clocks and watches display 12 hours at a time is so that they have space to show finer resolution of time. If you try to cram 24 hours onto a clock, it’s not easy to tell if it’s 12:20 or 12:30 at a quick glance.
Most people are not too stupid to be aware of if they are in the first 12 hours or second 12 hours of a day, so they benefit from a watch with 12 hour timescale and finer resolution so that they can more easily see exactly what time it is.
And for all the dummies posting about 12h vs 24h clocks. In the sense of saying that it’s 1pm vs 13:00. That’s not what this meme is even describing. This is about the physical layout of a clock or watch face.
You could get a jump hour watch, meaning the hour isn’t a slowly moving hand but instead jumps from 6 to 7 with a jump, avoiding potential mixing up of hours, it would make it easier to read those 24h
Like this watch
Edit: The original watch linked is a weird one, it’s not a jump hour watch but instead it has a jumping dial to turn it from a 12h to a 24h, very neat! I can’t seem to find a 24h jump hour watch apart from this 30k breguet lol
I can’t believe this is the first I’m hearing of 24-hour analogue clocks! That’s so cool. But yeah, I see your point about it now allowing for very much precision at a glance.
If 12 is better than 24 we should build 6 hour analog clocks already!
This is what the minute and second hands are for, though
Haven’t seen this one this week. Thanks
Keep it simple and just measure in terms of seconds since the Big Bang. The current time is 435,884,579,968,052,736 seconds, easy peasy
Most of that time is irrelevant to me. Let’s just start it in 1970. And I need more precision, so can we do milliseconds instead of seconds?
This would go great with my idea of everyone having a GUID instead of a name.
Maybe where you’re sitting. But my frame of reference has had slightly different time dilation than yours.
Oh also the hours will start at 1 and the minutes will start at 0
We will also use 3 sticks to tell the time.
Time is linear. But this will be circular.
Time …line? Time is not made of lines. It is made of circles. That is why clocks are round!
The clock makes so much more sense when you rewrite the 12 as a 0
Babylonians: I see this as a complete win.
Another classic meme. Love to see it getting a proper repost after all these long weeks.
Isn’t this a standup routine?
His name is Dave Allen
Thanks. Nice username, mine is also a reference.
First one to notice, or rather mention at least. Thanks!
Hope you stand a better chance in life ;)
