Why are there 60 minutes in a day?

Answer 1

Actually, there are 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day. But oddly enough, the first use of "minutes" did apply to 1/60 of a day. The origins of the hour and minute date from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and later the Greeks. * The Egyptians divided day and night into 12 equal sections each (the hour), regardless of the actual seasonal length, according to the movements of the stars. * The Babylonians used 1/60th of a day, and 1/60th of that interval, and so forth. * The Greeks used both the mean hour (1/24 of a solar day) and the more precise 1/60th measurements, so that "second" came to have its meaning as the "second division" by 60. Of course, they had no way to actually measure such precise time. At some point prior to its use in Persia in the year 1000, the division by 60 was applied to the hour, yielding the current arrangement of 60 minutes to the hour and 60 seconds to the minute.