Who invented our current time system

As Ogle points out in her book, the Bombay Municipal Corporation only accepted Indian Standard Time nearly 50 years after the conference, thus abandoning Bombay time.

India now has a single time zone for a territory that spans about km in width—effectively creating areas that experience the sun rising at different times. Each evening the sun sets more than 90 minutes later in west India than in the eastern part of the country because there is a single time zone for the entire country. Besides, the arbitrary invention of modern time paves the way for new forms of protest and resistance against the oppression of power.

In China, for example, the time shown on your watch can get you imprisoned. All of China is in a single time zone—Beijing Standard Time—even though it covers an area that is approximately the size of the United States of America, which, instead, has six different time zones. Official Beijing time is about two hours ahead of the natural, daylight time of the people in Xinjiang, a region in north-west China, where the Muslim minority Uyghurs, an ethnic group of Turkish origin, live.

In this region, the Chinese government applies invasive repression and widespread surveillance, using advanced facial recognition and digital surveillance, as well as controversial re-education camps for Uyghurs who oppose Beijing.

However, this tool risks being subversive and, according to a report by Human Rights Watch in , there has been at least one case in which China imprisoned an Uyghur man because he set his watch behind Beijing Time. As Vanessa Ogle points out in her book, the invention of modern time offers the opportunity to reflect on the meaning and effects of technological change.

Modern time is neither a natural nor an apolitical concept. It reflects a well-defined ideology that draws its origins from the idea of technological superiority and undisputed efficiency that accompanied the development of the second industrial revolution in the West. We must not, therefore, observe modern time only with a scientific approach, but must consider it as an essential tool for the spread of Western thought , which seeks to impose its concepts of uniformity and progress on the rest of the world, even with the help of clock hands and watches.

Egyptian-born French writer Albert Cossery cleverly describes in his novel, Laziness in the Fertile Valley , the psychological burden of the introduction of an alien time, compared to the one that was observed in Egypt before the arrival of the British. The British wanted to transform Egypt into a colony that was efficient and synchronized, worshipping the demands of punctuality. Therefore they changed the local calendar and introduced the concept of modern time.

Oppressed and upset by the consequences of this change, the only solution that remains to the characters of the novel is to sleep all day.

Thus, Cossery defines the only solemn protest that remains for those who seek to oppose the tyrants of modern time—inaction. Before March , the fashion, food, and air transportation industries were skyrocketing. Then, the sudden downfall came. Oct 22, Kendi Oct 3, If nobody invented time, how did time get its name? Josh gough Aug 26, Aug 29, Thanks for joining the conversation, Josh! We're glad you visited Wonderopolis.

Mario Jun 29, Jul 1, Oct 5, Daboss Apr 30, Wonderopolis Apr 30, Cody Mar 5, Ok I understand how years, months and weeks came about..

But days, why 24 hours? Why 60 mins? Why 60 seconds? A day could of been divided up in any manner Is there some sort of significance? Why not 10 hours, mins, and seconds?

Jag Jun 30, Jul 3, The Answerer Aug 30, Sep 3, Nice answer, The Answerer! Wonderopolis Mar 9, Wonder really doesn't answer Cody's question. Wonderopolis May 8, Sierra Jan 13, Wonderopolis Jan 15, Hi Sierra! Hubba bubba Aug 20, I really enjoyed learning about time. Wonderoplis is an amazing website that I always learn so much on, due to the interactive activities we need to do on it such as the quizzes and videos, etc.

Wonderopolis Aug 20, Wonderopolis Jun 4, Wonderopolis Nov 13, Ty Oct 18, I thought time was invented by Earth's gravitational pull. Wonderopolis Oct 19, Kevin Oct 18, By the way, we just learned about Native Americans in Social Studies.

Halee Oct 18, I thought a scientist created time. I didn't believe it when it said time wasn't created. Wonderopolis Oct 18, Hey Halee! Maybe the sun had something to do with how time came to be.

Did people invent time to organize their lives? Jade pruitt Oct 18, That is a question I have been wondering about for a long time. Did God just invent it and spoke to Jesus or Moses or something. Hey Jade! Austin Hughes Oct 18, Hey Austin! Thanks for sharing your comment with us! Matt H. Oct 18, I think it was someone who wanted to invent a lazer gun and made a mistake.

Hey Matt! That is a fun idea! Chris Oct 18, How come nobody invented time? Timekeeping was a messy and bewildering business in most parts of the 19th-century world. American railways recognized 75 different local times in ; three of those were in Chicago alone. In Germany, travellers had to clarify whether departures were according to Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Ludwigshafen, or Frankfurt time.

By the end of the century, this maddening variety of competing local times was making it difficult to transport everything from spices to armies. Clashing calendars made the headaches even worse. Until revolutionaries jettisoned the Julian calendar in , Russia was 13 days behind western Europe. Islamic societies counted years from C.

This was the dream articulated by Scottish-Canadian engineer Sandford Fleming and officially adopted by diplomats at the Prime Meridian Conference in Washington, D. Calendar reform was no less critical. Simply extending the Gregorian calendar worldwide was one option. Many subscribed to a design first articulated by the French positivist philosopher Auguste Comte: a perfectly rationalized calendar year of 13 equal months with 28 days each. Major firms like Sears and Kodak had been doing their internal accounting this way for years, but it proved a hard sell.

Overall, time reformers were remarkably successful at bending the world to their will. But it was a hard-won achievement. Around the globe, local populations resented European meddling with their everyday lives and traditional rhythms. The citizens of Bombay openly revolted. In late Ottoman Beirut, colorful and cosmopolitan, locals cheerfully acknowledged new ways of measuring time without relinquishing the old. The chimes of new public clocks overlapped with church bells and muezzin calls.

This non-metric measurement of time is far from ideal, but what other comparably accurate methods have been used historically? Our hour day comes from the ancient Egyptians who divided day-time into 10 hours they measured with devices such as shadow clocks, and added a twilight hour at the beginning and another one at the end of the day-time, says Lomb. The Egyptians had a system of 36 star groups called 'decans' — chosen so that on any night one decan rose 40 minutes after the previous one.

Amazingly, such tables have been found inside the lids of coffins, presumably so that the dead could also tell the time. In the Egyptian system, the length of the day-time and night-time hours were unequal and varied with the seasons.

The subdivision of hours and minutes into 60 comes from the ancient Babylonians who had a predilection for using numbers to the base Lomb says it's likely that the Babylonians were interested in because that was their estimate for the number of days in a year.

Their adoption of a base 60 system was probably allowed them to make complex calculations using fractions. The ancient Chinese used a dual time system where they divided the day into 12 so-called, 'double hours', originally with the middle of the first double hour being at midnight.

They also had a separate system in which a day was divided into equal parts called 'ke', that are sometimes translated as 'mark' into English. Because of this inconvenience, much later on, in the year of our era, the number of ke in a day was reduced to 96," says Lomb.