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Geplaatst op 23-03-2026 door Marc Hut
Anyone who glances at their watch finds it perfectly normal: an hour consisting of 60 minutes, each of which has exactly 60 seconds. You and I wouldn’t know any different; it’s always been that way, hasn’t it? But is that really the case? Who actually decided that an hour should consist of 60 minutes? Why didn’t we opt for, say, 100 minutes per hour and 10 hours per day? Something that seems much more logical on paper? The answer lies surprisingly far back in history and doesn’t begin with modern technology, but with stars, sundials and ancient calculation methods from Egypt and Mesopotamia!
Our current division of time is not, in fact, a rigid modern design. It was not devised yesterday but is a compromise that has evolved over thousands of years. It even dates back to ancient Egypt, where the day was already divided into 24 hours. The Egyptians were masters at predicting the seasons. Day and night were divided based on the position of the stars and also sundials. Step by step, a 24-hour day emerged. Initially, however, these hours were not always of equal length, as summer hours and winter hours could differ. It was only later that the hour became a fixed, equal unit. All this made it easier for the Egyptians to predict the flooding of the Nile, and thus the arrival of a fertile period.
That does not explain why an hour has exactly 60 minutes. For that, we must look not to the Nile region but to the inhabitants of those two other fertile rivers (the Euphrates and Tigris): the Babylonians. They used a base-60 number system, also known as the sexagesimal system. Whereas we are used to counting in tens, the Babylonians counted in sixties. In practice, this system proved to work very well for fields such as astronomy and geometry. The number 60 is, in fact, very easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. That is precisely where its strength lies. An hour of 60 minutes can be easily divided into half an hour, a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes or ten minutes. With a 100-minute system, this actually becomes more difficult in many everyday situations.
That Babylonian influence later carried over into astronomy. In the Almagest, the Greek astronomer Ptolemy described a system in which degrees were divided into 60 minutes, and these in turn into 60 seconds. That principle was later also applied to the measurement of time. Even the words ‘minute’ and ‘second’ date from that time. They derive from Latin terms for the first and second small divisions. What once began as a mathematical method for recording angles and celestial movements eventually found its way onto clocks and watches.
So, in fact, we live with a combination of two ancient legacies. From the Egyptians, we inherited the idea of dividing the day into 24 parts. From the Babylonians, we inherited the division into 60 and then 60 again. Together, these form the structure we still use today: 24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds.
Yet it is logical to ask whether there was ever a desire to change this later on. Attempts were certainly made. During the French Revolution, an attempt was made to introduce a decimal system. The plan was to divide the day into 10 hours, each hour into 100 minutes and each minute into 100 seconds. On paper, it was brilliant: neat and fully in line with the decimal spirit of the metric system. It fitted perfectly with our millimetres and metres, but also with units of weight such as grams, ounces and kilograms. Clocks and pocket watches were even made with a decimal dial. But in practice, it didn’t work. People were already used to the old time division; society ran on it, and astronomy and navigation were also deeply intertwined with the existing system. The experiment therefore did not last.
And that is precisely the real reason why we still have 60 minutes in an hour today. Not because it is the only logical solution, but because it was a historically clever system that worked well and became deeply embedded in culture, science and technology. Once something like that has become established worldwide, you don’t just change it on a whim. Time is not just a unit of measurement, but also an agreement that must be used by everyone at the same time!
For watch enthusiasts, that story makes it all the more fascinating. Every minute hand gliding across the dial actually carries a few thousand years of history with it. A modern wristwatch therefore brings together not only technology and design, but also traces of ancient stargazers, Egyptian sundials and Babylonian arithmetic. That suddenly gives something as seemingly simple as a minute much greater significance.
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