Why is an hour divided into 60 minutes?

Answer 1

60 has many factors. So you can cut up a single hour into 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12,

15, 20, or 30 equal pieces without the need to cut pieces from any minutes.

72 might also have been a good choice . . . it can be cut into 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12,

18, 24, or 36 equal pieces, without any fractions of minutes.

The disadvantage of 60 minutes is that it makes it a bit more complicated to add,

subtract, or multiply periods of time that include hours and minutes.

On several occasions, there have been movements promoting 'decimal' time.

If we changed to that kind of system, then you'd have, let's say, 10 new hours

in a day, 100 new minutes in an new hour, and 100 new seconds in a new minute.

That would make the new second roughly the same as the old second (0.864

of it), and it would be a lot easier to add, subtract, and multiply periods of time.

Parts of a day, an hour, or a minute would just be simple decimals, without all of

the clunky 12s, 24s, 60s and AM/PM that we wrestle with now.

These campaigns have never gone anywhere ... possibly related to the fact that

so many people in the US are so afraid of the Metric system, which offers exactly

the same type and scope of benefits.