We use them 24 hours a day, the whole week, month, and the entire year all throughout our lives. And almost all of us never questioned how these came to be? Of course, if we have finished the rudimentary lessons of astronomy and geography, we know that how we measure time is really based on these two, most especially the rotation of the earth and its revolution around the sun – the former takes an hour and the latter, a year. But how did we come to use these notations? The notations came about in the development of man and civilization. Considering man’s average life is miniscule, almost insignificant compared to cosmic, geologic, and historical processes, we simply accept them in our everyday lives. But sometimes, a few would have curious thoughts on how these came to be? 365/366 days to a year, 24 hours to a day, 60 minutes to an hour, and 60 seconds to a minute. Theoretically, one can divide time and dates using the base 10, you know … thus, 10, 100, 1,000…0.1, 0.01, etc.
Time divisions and notations are man-made…artificial, if you may, and could have been different, without suffering from accuracy. And this is related to our choice of counting, or number, systems. At present the governing number system --the ones we use in most of our processes, is the decimal system-- base 10. This does not mean it is the better system; it simply means it was the one which gained more usage and became universally used. But it could have been another base system. In fact, today when we are more dependent on computers, we often forget that our lives are now being dictated by electronics which use the binary (base 2) system which has only two numerals --0 and 1, as well as the hexadecimal system (base 16).
How long is a day (1 rotation of the earth)? It depends on where you measure it with. It is 24 hours with respect to the sun but once every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and four seconds with respect to other distant stars. The earth revolves around the sun in 365 days, six hours, nine minutes with reference to the stars, which is why we add an extra year every four years (leap year) to compensate for the difference. The 60 minutes/hour and 60 seconds/minute we inherited from the Babylonians, who used a sexagesimal (counting in 60s) system for mathematics and astronomy. They derived their number system from the Sumerians who were using it as early as 3500 BC.
More interestingly, the original convention was not only about time but also in geometry. One whole circle is 360 degrees, and each degree is 60 minutes, and a minute has 60 seconds. Of course, today’s convention prefers to simply convert these to decimal notations for ease of calculation. But the significant reality we can discover in our measurement is that there is a connection and correlation between mathematics, particularly geometry, physics, time measurement, astronomy, and all observable realities of our lives. God is a god of order from the very start of creation.