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[–] 129 points 10 months ago (33 children)

Clocks were sundials.

If you can see the time, it's not night.

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  • [–] 47 points 10 months ago* (11 children)

    100% This.

    Also, being an evolution of sundials is the reason all analog clocks move their hands in the same direction.

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  • [–] 48 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    *Being evolution of sundials located on the northern hemisphere.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Sundials were almost certainly invented in the Northern Hemisphere and probably didn't break into the southern hemisphere until late antiquity at the earliest, so it kinda makes sense that it'd be centered around that concept. Also clocks were invented in the northern emisphere as well, wait are there southern hemisphere clocks that turn the opposite way like those maps where the southern hemisphere is on top?

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    Sundials were absolutely surely invented several times around the world, also in Australia etc. After all, a sundial is nothing but a stick in the ground.

    If mechanical clocks were invented before colonizers arrived, then the colonizers' clocks eventually replaced them. But, I understand they were invited only after all of the southern hemisphere had been colonized by less civilized nations, so they follow the colonizers' standards everywhere.

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  • [–] 12 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    So you're saying clockwise can also be called sundialwise?

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    I was answering about the Northern/Southern hemisphere logic of this... and realised that it depends if the sundial is vertical in a wall (facing South in the Northern hemisphere) or horizontal (facing the zenith/sky)... today you can easily find those wall sundials in many monumental buildings (at least these seem to me more common than the others) and the shadow is casted counterclockwise in the Northern hemisphere, so not sure if the clockwise sense was locked by sundials... also in the Southern hemisphere logic flips completely.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (10 children)

    I think their point was they picked 12 and not 24 or some other number to divide a circle by

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  • [–] 13 points 10 months ago* (5 children)

    That’s a Babylonian thing. They were obsessed with highly divisible numbers like, 12, 24 and 60. Basically the opposite of prime numbers, which are super annoying to divide. Babylonians wanted their numbers to as nice as possible when dividing. For example, 60 is particularly nice since it’s not absurdly large, but when dividing it, you have lots of options.

    All of this was long before the decimal point and calculators were invented, so divisibility was a big thing back then. Nowadays though, having weird fractions like that is more inconvenient and annoying than nice. Thanks to the Babylonians, we have super messy time units now.

    Thanks to the Romans, we also have super messy units for length, weight, volume and money. Yes, even money had convoluted fractions. That’s not a huge deal though, since basically nobody uses those any more.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    Thanks to the Romans, we also have super messy units for length

    But we can still blame the English for the furlong.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I wouldn't blame the Babylonians for us breaking the good standard and going 58, 59, 60, 61, 62 instead of the 58, 59, 100, 101, 102 that works just fine. They were first, we are the ones who added a new system aside the old one instead of replacing it.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    If that was the case, we would now be talking about 48 h clocks vs. 24 h clocks.

    18:40 pm on the 24h clock would equal 36:40 on the 48 h clock. You would still not know whether it's night or day just looking at the time.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (9 children)

    I present to you, illuminated clocks!

    crowd gasps MY UNIVERSE IS COLLAPSING the crowd starts screaming and lighting things on fire

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Your sundial still isn't showing time.

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