I believe the 360 degrees is attributed to Babylonians, who were using the Sumerian base 60 number system (6*60=360)

AndrewOMartin 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I just can't resist, pointing out that a "minute" is what you get when you split up an hour into 60 minute (i.e. the word pronounced my-newt) pieces, and a "second" is what you get if you break a minute into 60 pieces (i.e. you've performed the division a "second" time).

By this logic, 0.016 (recurring) seconds should be a called a "third".

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ralfd 5 days ago | parent [-]

> (i.e. the word pronounced my-newt)

"minute" comes from latin "pars minuta" and the "i" should be pronounced like in "minimum"

> By this logic, 0.016 (recurring) seconds should be a called a "third".

It should be "tertia". I found that in German and Polish it was used that way, but don't know about english:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertie_(Winkel)

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercja_k%C4%85towa

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card_zero 5 days ago | parent [-]

Should be the etymology of trice (but isn't). Odd omission from English.

Commodores had a 1/60 second "jiffy" for timing interrupts, that's all I could find.

	▲	thaliaarchi 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Unix V1 also used 1/60 seconds

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handsclean 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To elaborate a little, an advantage of this is there are many numbers it’s evenly divisible by.

60: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30

100: 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50

360: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72, 90, 120, 180

	▲	kps 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		60 and 360 are superior highly composite numbers¹. ¹ https://mathworld.wolfram.com/SuperiorHighlyCompositeNumber....

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nyeah 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's attributed, but the Babylonians knew a year was about 360 days.