1656 was when the first "practical" clock was invented by Christian Huygens
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3. The hour hand, the minute hand, and on most clocks, the second hand.
If that's "a quarter to," it means fifteen minutes before the hour; the minute hand on the 9.
The minute hand is the largest hand on most analogue clocks. At 3 o'clock on a 12-hour clock, the minute hand is pointing straight up to the 12. It measures time to the nearest minute by advancing one of the small minute hash marks every 60 seconds. Every time the second hand makes one full sweep of the clock face, the minute hand advances one of the minute marks. The second hand is the fastest moving hand on a standard analogue clock, making one full sweep every 60 seconds.
So that you can tell the time a bit more accurately. Long ago clocks just had one hand and you could tell the time roughly to the hour. Now we can tell the time to the minute.
60 minutes for hours