• Skua
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      2517 days ago

      The 12 hour division of the day is about a thousand years older than the idea to write zero as its own number, which I think could be the reason

        • @[email protected]
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          317 days ago

          Measuring tools started from 0 way before the digital era. A clock is a measuring tool. The reason is, people were too used to saying “12 o’clock” and seeing a 0 would throw them off

          • @[email protected]
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            317 days ago

            Measuring tools started from 0 way before the digital era

            that’s true, but when you’re measuring something the value you get is a cardinal, not an ordinal. I agree that we have been using 0 as a cardinal for a long time. however, we’ve been using 0 as an ordinal only since 1950s

            people think of time as a sequence of events, hence there’s 1st (1 o’clock), 2nd (2 o’clock) and so on until the 12th (12 o’clock)

    • @[email protected]
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      617 days ago

      It does, in most places outside of the US.

      24-hour timekeeping (aka military time) solves a lot of weirdness about clocks, but not all of it.