Why are hours 60 minutes long?

Answer 1

I think it was a convenience, as people began to need smaller time intervals than 1 hour to agree on. Before mechanical clocks, if you had to agree on a meeting time with someone, the closest you could agree on was 'early morning', 'late morning', 'early afternoon', 'late afternoon', or 'night'. The only time-keeper that everybody had was the sun, and these designations were the finest splits that everybody could identify with accuracy. With the advent of mechanical devices ... even if it was only a sundial, hourglass, or water clock ... the machine could be marked off in small parts of a day, and you could start to schedule meetings for a certain hour. When actual clocks suddenly offered great accuracy and reliability, marks smaller than hours were required. Scientists needed to talk about very small parts of time, but ordinary people only needed fractions of an hour ... half hours, quarter hours, etc. I think that's where the 60 came from ... a great solution to the need for a lot of subdivisions and for a lot of handy fractions. 60 is a great number because it has so many factors: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30 ! So you can split it evenly into 10 different sizes of pieces, for scheduling stockholder meetings or meeting your babe at the malt shoppe.