When and who decided that one minute consisted of 60 seconds, a hour was 60 minutes and one day was 24 hours?

Question

When and who decided that one minute consisted of 60 seconds, a hour was 60 minutes and one day was 24 hours?

Answer 1

The period of one day was derived from the completion of one spin of the earth using probably the sun as a reference.  A twenty four hour period gives us 15 degrees per hour of rotation.  Why they picked 15 degrees as the rotation to be an hour is a good question.  Perhaps in earlier times man told time to other men using something as a reference without math.  They could have held the fist up to the horizon and said, let's do lunch when the sun god gets to 5 fists.  A fist held to the horizon may be close to 15 degrees, or the width of three fingers perhaps.

Answer 2

The ancient Egyptians, 5000 BC or so, divided the daytime into 12 hours and the night time into 12 hours.  One hour is about how long a soldier can stand guard by himself without falling asleep, so the captain of the guards would check them every hour.   Also when men are marching, it's good to rest for a few minutes every hour.

The ancient Babylonians ( ~3500 BC) divided the hour into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds.  They liked the number 60 for all sorts of things.

Answer 3

Well ,do u want to change the theory?