DIVISION OF TIME

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12250, 23 September 1925, Page 10

DIVISION OF TIME

ANCIENT SYSTEM’S SURVIVAL . STARTED IN BABYLQX. Even countries that have adopted the decimal system -of weights and measures still cling to the old-fashioned method of the hour into sixty minutes and thb minute into sixty seconds. This division of time has survived: through the changes and revolutions of thousands of years. It appears to have started in ancient Babylon. The Babylonians used the decimal system for' business purposes, tut counted time by sixties. The reason may be that no; other number has so many divisions. These people divided the sun’s daily journey into twenty-four parasangs. a parasang being roughly the distance a good walker could cover in an hour, and divided each parasang, or hour, into sixty minutes. The system on to the Greeks and introduced into Europe in the second century B.C. When clocks 'began to be made, the dials wcre ; divided according to this system. In the past thirty years several attempts have been made to adopt a decimal system for dividing time. Tho idea is to divide the day into a hunched units, each called a “run.” Each run would he divided into ten “decirun ,> or “mar.” A “mar’ 7 would be 1.44 minutes and a ‘‘run” 14.4 minutes or almost a quarter of an hour. FIRST REST IN 45 YEARS HOLIDAY ENDS IN DEATH. A man who was taking his first holiday in 45 years was knocked down and killed by a motor-’bus in London recently. He was Mr E. G. Blackley, of Chicago, and he was in England to. attend the wedding of a relative. The accident happened after Mr and Mrs Blackley and their niece had visited the Tower of London. In recording a verdict of accidental death, the coroner said 'it was a sad and tragic end to a holiday.