Who decided that the number 60 would be the basic unit of time (60 seconds = 1 minute, and 60 minutes = 1 hour)?
The Babylonians in ancient Egypt made this decision due to the fact that they did most of their astronomical calculations using what is called the sexagesimal system. This mathematical system based on the number 60 helped making calculations easier and more convenient because the number 60 is divisable by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, and 30. The first sexagesimal place (which is the equivelant to a decimal place in a 10-base numbering system) is what we refer to as a minute and the second sexagesimal place is called a second. Thus we have minutes and seconds. Reference used from “A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, O. Neugebauer, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1975.
