actually the romans divided only the day & the dial into 12 hours
just as they divided the year & the zodiac into 12 months
so it is really their dozen lunations per annum that caused all this
the night they divided not into hours at all but into 4 watches or vigils
as a result of these fairly natural divisions of time
the length of an hour at summer solstice was actually about twice the
duration of the same hour at winter solstice
with some variation depending on latitude of course
& it was vice versa for the relative length of the night vigils
meaning they were much shorter in summer & much longer in winter
& almost unbearable for the 4 watchmen on a cold night
our modern minutes &or seconds
they didnt have any notion of by day or night
but only a vague concept of moments
or periods sometimes but not always briefer than hours
which they however associated more with their own subjective impulses
than with objective spans of time
& the roman model of the day & dial is still the optimum one
since neither has any moving parts
there is nothing to set nor synchronize
there is nothing but local solar time
no daylight savings needed
in fact there is almost no reason to think about or live in any time but
the eternal present
once you commit to quantifying time into hard fractions
you are enslaved
& once you get into hard edged time zones
you are really screwed
so the ideal width of a time zone
as the romans well knew
is
none
m
>
>
>I have asked many academics and received no answer, but this group always
>seems to have answers, so here goes:
>
>if there were no such thing as an hour, what is the optimum or ideal width
>of a time zone?
>
>Time zones are a compromise between a continuously changing standard time
>that is represented by local solar time; and a global standard time with
>everyone setting their clocks to GMT. Before time zones, Philadelphia set
>their clocks 12 minutes different than did New York city. Both of those
>systems have problems.
>
>In the late 19th century, a compromise solution was proposed: time ZONES,
>with a constant standard time within each zone, and a big change at the
>zone boundary. This concentrated all the problems at the boundaries,
>places like White City. If time zones were wider, there would be fewer
>boundaries around the globe, fewer problem places, but within zones
>standard time would get too far from solar time. Narrower zones allow
>closer correspondence between solar and standard time, but more of those
>troublesome time zone boundaries.
>
>We divide the day into 12 hours, and the night likewise into 12 hours,
>because the Romans like the dozen, 12 has so many common factors. And the
>Earth rotates 15 degrees per hour, so that's why the average time zone is
>15 degrees of longitude wide. But what if we had no hour, just 1440
>minutes per day. It would be amazing luck if the idea time zone really if
>60 minutes, or 15 degrees wide. So, a puzzle: Without a unit called an
>hour (= 60 minutes), what would be the ideal width of a time zone?
>
>David
>
>
>
>
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