Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Minute and second of arc
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==History== The concepts of degrees, minutes, and seconds—as they relate to the measure of both angles and time—derive from [[Babylonia|Babylonian]] [[Babylonian astronomy|astronomy]] and time-keeping. Influenced by the [[Sumer|Sumerians]], the ancient Babylonians divided the Sun's perceived motion across the sky over the course of one [[Solar day|full day]] into 360 degrees.<ref>{{cite web |title=Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes, yet there are only 24 hours in a day? |url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-time-division-days-hours-minutes/ |website=Scientific American |publisher=SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. |access-date=25 July 2021 |date=March 5, 2008|author-first1=Michael A. |author-last1=Lombardi}}</ref>{{Failed verification|date=December 2023}} Each degree was subdivided into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Correll |first=Malcolm |journal=The Physics Teacher |volume=15 |pages=476–479 |issue=8 |date=November 1977 |doi=10.1119/1.2339739 |title=Early Time Measurements}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|journal=Journal for the History of Astronomy|author-first1=F. Richard|author-last1=Stephenson|author-link=F. Richard Stephenson|author-first2=Louay J. |author-last2=Fatoohi|date=May 1994|doi=10.1177/002182869402500203|title=The Babylonian Unit of Time|volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=99–110 }}</ref> Thus, one Babylonian degree was equal to four minutes in modern terminology, one Babylonian minute to four modern seconds, and one Babylonian second to {{sfrac|1|15}} (approximately 0.067) of a modern second.
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)