"Sixty Minutes Make an Hour."

Max Muller, in the Fortnightly Review, gives the reason for the division of an hour into sixty minutes. He says that in Babylon there existed by the side of the decimal system of notation another system, the sexagesimal, which was counted by sixties. Whey that number should have been chosen is clear enough, and it speaks well for the practical sense of those ancient Babylonian merchants. There is no number which has so many divisors as 60; it can be divided without a remainder by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. The Babylonians divided the sun's path into 245 parasangs. A parasang is about four and a half miles; the Babylonian astronomers compared the progress of the sun during one hour to the progress made by a good walker during the same time, both accomplishing one parasang. The whole course of the sun was 24 parasangs, or 360 degrees. Each parasang or hour was subdivided into 60 minutes. This system of the revolution of the earth on its axis, or the apparent path of the sun around the earth, every twenty-four hours, was handed on to the Greeks, and Hipparchus, the Greek philosopher, who lived 150 B. C., introduced the Babylonian hour into Europe. Ptolemy, in what is known as the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, gave still wide currency to the Babylonian method of reckoning time. It was carried along by traditional knowledge down through the Middle Ages, and, strange to say, survived the French Revolution. The French endeavored to reduce every measure to the decimal system of reckoning, but for some unexplained reason they left the clock and watch system alone, so that the measure of time remains sexagesimal, or Babylonian, each hour consisting of sixty minutes.