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Here's an idea:
Let's make all clocks where no matter what time of the year it is, 6am is always when the sun rises, noon is when the sun is exactly overhead, and 6pm is always when the sun sets.
Sure, the length of an 'hour' would be constantly changing, yeah that wouldn't get super confusing real quick.. /s
There really is an xkcd for everything.
That's more or less how it worked in premodern times. You didn't start at midnight but devided the day into 12 hours, starting with the first hour at sun rise and the 12th at sun set. For (ancient) Rome, their hours were like 45min to 1:15h which isn't too much a difference when you think about it. Also it isn't a bad idea to work less hours in winter so you can experience the sun at all.
Time to nerd this shit! 🥸
There were several counting systems:
- In Old Egypt and in the medieval times they counted 12 day hours from sunrise to sundown and another 12 night hours from sundown to sunrise. A lot of systems do/did that because one tracked the sun and the other tracked the moon and the stars. It's more like as 12 + 12 hours system instead of a 24 hours system.
- In the Babylonian system the day had 24 hours, beginning at sunrise. The name has nothing to do with the ancient Babylonians though. 🤷♂️
- The Italian system was the same as the Babylonian system but began counting at sundown. This is also the case in the Hebrew and Islamic calendar. Btw that's the reason why Christmas night starts at the 24th of December in some countries (like Germany) and the 25th of December in other countries (like USA). The former converted from the old date/time system to the modern done while the later just went 'Nah! We'll do what the Bible says.'
- The ancient Babylonians had danna, double hours. Hence a day had 6 day and 6 night dannas.
- Then there are still used 12 hour clock dividing the day in ante meridiem (before midday) and post meridiem (after midday). It is mainly used in Britain and countries that were ruled by the British Empire.
- There's the current 24 hour clock starting and ending at midnight.
- There is the Julian Day where the counting -again- starts at sunrise. It is still used(!) in astronomy.
- There is Rammesses II's hour calendar where the number of day and night hours changed depending on the month. June-July had 18 day and 6 night hours. December-January had 6 day and 18 night hours. Why does a country near the equator need 18 day or night hours? It's not that the day and night length change that much during the seasons. 🤷♂️
- The Chinese calendar changed several times. Each day started and ended at midnight (like today) and initially was divided in 100 ke (1 ke = 14.4 minutes). Later that number changed to 120 (12 * 10), 108 (because 12 * 9) and 96 (12 * 8). When they also introduced double hours, ke became 15 minutes long. The double hours started counting at 23:00.
- And many more.
Also it isn’t a bad idea to work less hours in winter so you can experience the sun at all.
In the times before the light bulb work could only be done during the day. Candles made from beewax were too expensive for the peasants. If they used candles instead of kindling they were made from tallow and created a lot of smut and didn't gave much light. That made them a bit unpopular. I wonder why? 👤
At least in my country work days were divided in morning, midday, afternoon and night. You worked your field during the morning, went to market at midday, did handyman work and chores during afternoon and slept during night time.
Cries in programmer while looking at northern Sweden