Time is the continuous passing of existence, recorded by division into years, days, hours, minutes and seconds.
The Romans used daylight and darkness to determine time, so for them an hour was 45 minutes in the winter and 75 in the summer.
It wasn't until 525 when the monk Dionysius Exigous (Dennis the Little) devised a new calendar originating from Christ’s birth, which he assumed was 48 years after the death of Julius Caesar, that some in the west began recording time from the life of Jesus.
The Malaysian phrase for the time it takes to eat a banana is "pisan zapra" and it was a measure of time used before clocks were invented.
The phrase "o'clock" is short for "of the clock" and comes from a time when people had to specify their time came from a clock instead of a sundial or other device.
During the American Revolutionary War, many soldiers, including George Washington, carried a portable sundial to tell the time.
In 1862 Adolphe Nicole of Switzerland patented the chronograph -- a timepiece that allows for split-second timing of sporting events.
On February 8, 1879 Scottish-Canadian engineer Sandford Fleming first proposed the dividing the world into 24 time zones at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute. This made him the father of world standard time.
American times zones were created by railroad officials in 1883. The underlying cause of confusion was simply that the United States had no time standard. Each town or city would keep its own solar time, setting clocks so noon was when the sun was directly overhead.
Greenwich, in London, England was established as Universal Time meridian of longitude in 1884.
From 1986, the term Greenwich Mean Time was replaced by UTC. However the Greenwich meridian remains that from which all longitudes are measured, and the world's standard time zones are calculated from it, each hour corresponding to 15° longitude.
The Royal Greenwich Observatory began broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips" in 1924.
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| Pixiebay |
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME
The Romans used daylight and darkness to determine time, so for them an hour was 45 minutes in the winter and 75 in the summer.
It wasn't until 525 when the monk Dionysius Exigous (Dennis the Little) devised a new calendar originating from Christ’s birth, which he assumed was 48 years after the death of Julius Caesar, that some in the west began recording time from the life of Jesus.
The Malaysian phrase for the time it takes to eat a banana is "pisan zapra" and it was a measure of time used before clocks were invented.
The phrase "o'clock" is short for "of the clock" and comes from a time when people had to specify their time came from a clock instead of a sundial or other device.
 |
| Pixiebay |
During the American Revolutionary War, many soldiers, including George Washington, carried a portable sundial to tell the time.
In 1862 Adolphe Nicole of Switzerland patented the chronograph -- a timepiece that allows for split-second timing of sporting events.
On February 8, 1879 Scottish-Canadian engineer Sandford Fleming first proposed the dividing the world into 24 time zones at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute. This made him the father of world standard time.
American times zones were created by railroad officials in 1883. The underlying cause of confusion was simply that the United States had no time standard. Each town or city would keep its own solar time, setting clocks so noon was when the sun was directly overhead.
Greenwich, in London, England was established as Universal Time meridian of longitude in 1884.
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| Official Standard Time Zones in the world. Wikipedia |
From 1986, the term Greenwich Mean Time was replaced by UTC. However the Greenwich meridian remains that from which all longitudes are measured, and the world's standard time zones are calculated from it, each hour corresponding to 15° longitude.
The Royal Greenwich Observatory began broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips" in 1924.
 |
| Greenwich clock. By Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, |
Unix time is a system for describing a point in time, defined as an approximation of the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), on January 1, 1970. At 23:31:30 on February 13, 2009 the Unix system time number reached 1234567890 seconds. Parties and other celebrations were held around the world, among various technical subcultures, to celebrate 1234567890 day.
The invention in 1955 of the caesium atomic clock has led to the replacement of older and purely astronomical time standards, for most practical purposes, by newer time standards based wholly or partly on atomic time.
The Babylonians created the 7 day week because there are seven celestial bodies visible to the naked eye (The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn).
Formerly measurement of time on Earth was based on our planet's rotation on its axis, but this was found to be irregular. Therefore, the second, the standard SI unit of time, was redefined in terms of Earth's annual orbit of the Sun by the International Committee of Weights and Measures in 1956.
A jiffy is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A second is called a second because it's the result of the second division of an hour by 60, the fist division being a minute.
The official definition of 1 second is based on a quantum mechanical phenomenon, namely "the duration of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Caesium 133 atom's outermost electron".
A moment is a medieval unit of time, which corresponded to approximately 90 modern seconds.
A zeptosecond, a trillionth of a billionth of a second, is the smallest division of time that has been observed.
The word 'fortnight' is a contraction of 'fourteen-nights'.
Someone traveling at the speed of light could travel forever because they wouldn't experience time at all.
There is an official world record for time traveling. It's held by cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who has spent 803 days total in orbit around Earth. According to Einstein's theories of relativity, this would mean Krikalev effectively has gained 22.68 milliseconds of lifetime on his journeys to space.
If we put a giant mirror ten light years away from Earth and looked at it through a telescope theoretically we'd see 20 years into the past.
Because the earth is slowing down, today is about 0.00000002 seconds longer than yesterday.
A.M. stands for “Ante Meridiem,” which is Latin for “Before Midday”; P.M. stands for “Post Meridiem,” which is Latin for “After Midday.”
Amazonian speakers of Nheengatú use gestures to describe time, pointing at where the sun would be in the sky to say a specific time of day.
Since 1405 until the present day without interruption, the Swiss city of Lausanne has maintained a lookout in the Cathedral bell tower. The lookout announces the time by yelling the hour from 10 pm to 2 am, 365 days a year. The lookout cries the hour to each cardinal direction.
Dogs can tell time by scent. They can smell different times of the day, and how long you've been gone by how much your (owner's) aroma has dissipated since you've left.
The invention in 1955 of the caesium atomic clock has led to the replacement of older and purely astronomical time standards, for most practical purposes, by newer time standards based wholly or partly on atomic time.
TIME MEASUREMENT
The Babylonians created the 7 day week because there are seven celestial bodies visible to the naked eye (The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn).
Formerly measurement of time on Earth was based on our planet's rotation on its axis, but this was found to be irregular. Therefore, the second, the standard SI unit of time, was redefined in terms of Earth's annual orbit of the Sun by the International Committee of Weights and Measures in 1956.
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| A pendulum-governed escapement of a clock, ticking every second |
A jiffy is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A second is called a second because it's the result of the second division of an hour by 60, the fist division being a minute.
The official definition of 1 second is based on a quantum mechanical phenomenon, namely "the duration of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Caesium 133 atom's outermost electron".
A moment is a medieval unit of time, which corresponded to approximately 90 modern seconds.
A zeptosecond, a trillionth of a billionth of a second, is the smallest division of time that has been observed.
The word 'fortnight' is a contraction of 'fourteen-nights'.
FUN TIME FACTS
Someone traveling at the speed of light could travel forever because they wouldn't experience time at all.
There is an official world record for time traveling. It's held by cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who has spent 803 days total in orbit around Earth. According to Einstein's theories of relativity, this would mean Krikalev effectively has gained 22.68 milliseconds of lifetime on his journeys to space.
If we put a giant mirror ten light years away from Earth and looked at it through a telescope theoretically we'd see 20 years into the past.
Because the earth is slowing down, today is about 0.00000002 seconds longer than yesterday.
A.M. stands for “Ante Meridiem,” which is Latin for “Before Midday”; P.M. stands for “Post Meridiem,” which is Latin for “After Midday.”
Amazonian speakers of Nheengatú use gestures to describe time, pointing at where the sun would be in the sky to say a specific time of day.
Since 1405 until the present day without interruption, the Swiss city of Lausanne has maintained a lookout in the Cathedral bell tower. The lookout announces the time by yelling the hour from 10 pm to 2 am, 365 days a year. The lookout cries the hour to each cardinal direction.
Dogs can tell time by scent. They can smell different times of the day, and how long you've been gone by how much your (owner's) aroma has dissipated since you've left.
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