Dragaera

while cursing amazon re the non-release of _TLoCB_

Sun Aug 10 18:28:00 PDT 2003

Regarding the hours in a day...on earth.

Hours were invented by the ancient Egyptians, possibly with influence 
of the Babylonians.  There were 12 hours of day in every ancient 
Egyptian day, and 12 hours of night.

Naturally, the length of the hours changed every day, with the seasons.

When picked up by the Europeans in the Middle Ages, the "hours" were 
kept track of by the local church in similar fashion...for prayer 
services.  Prayer services happened everyday at the same time relative 
to sunrise/sunset.

It's only when clocks were invented that hours were "sundered" from 
dawn and dusk, and instead made  into equal time intervals -> largely 
because the level of engineering associated with watchmaking could only 
accomplish so much (at first).

Read more about it here:
http://www.timezone.com/article.aspx?id=tmachine&articleId=tmachine0004

ed

--
Ed Hahn / ehahn at isochronism.com
"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got an even swing!"