I believe the 360 degrees is attributed to Babylonians, who were using the Sumerian base 60 number system (6*60=360)
Re:We'd be Better Off with 9-bit Bytes
by handsclean on Thursday August 07, 2025 @04:23AM
(#44821989)
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
60 and 360 are superior highly composite numbers¹.
¹ https://mathworld.wolfram.com/SuperiorHighlyCompositeNumber....
Re:We'd be Better Off with 9-bit Bytes
by AndrewOMartin on Thursday August 07, 2025 @05:19AM
(#44822324)
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".
> (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:
Re:We'd be Better Off with 9-bit Bytes
by card_zero on Thursday August 07, 2025 @07:05AM
(#44822994)
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.
Re:We'd be Better Off with 9-bit Bytes
by thaliaarchi on Sunday August 10, 2025 @06:28AM
(#44854205)
Unix V1 also used 1/60 seconds
Not that these are exclusive, but I thought it's a rounding of 365.25 days a year stemming from Egypt. 360 is a pretty useful number of degrees for a starry sky that changes ince a night.