We generally believe that the mathematicians led by Leonardo Fibonacci won
out over the Old Guard in replacing Roman numerals with Hindu-Arabic
numerals, but the victory was long drawn out, and is still incomplete.
Businesses continued to use Roman numerals for several centuries (because
addition and subtraction is easier in Roman numerals, and they didn't have
that much call for multiplication and division until interest became
socially acceptable). In Fibonacci's time, and up until the 17th century,
clocks existed almost exclusively in churches and monasteries, where they
regulated the hours of prayer. The Catholic church was having nothing to do
with these new-fangled heathen numbers, especially since the Crusades were
on at the time, and continued for centuries. The Church was especially
opposed to the idea of zero, both as the work of the infidel, and on
Aristotelian grounds. That is why the the twelve-hour system starts at XII,
followed by I, and not 0:00:00.
Typewriters, computer keyboards, and school recitations still put 0 after 9
rather than before 1. Such is Human Stupidity.
We had the same argument over the empty set in the 19th century (part of
what the Nazis later denounced as Jewish mathematics) and over empty arrays
in APL and related languages. It's not over yet, either in the culture at
large or in Lojban.
Edward Cherlin
Generalist
"A knot! Oh, do let me help to undo it."
Alice in Wonderland
-----Original Message-----
From: pycyn@aol.com [mailto:pycyn@aol.com]
Sent: Tue, September 18, 2001 1:33 AM
To: lojban@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e
In a message dated 9/17/2001 8:29:14 PM Central Daylight Time,
b.gohla@gmx.de writes:
from my observation people in germany tend to mix the 24h and the 12h
style
in speech.
It would be interesting to figure out what factors influence the different
uses. I tend to predict "official" vs. homebody usage.
<and the fact that 12 hour clocks have
> persisted since the Babylonians were the last to use a duodecimal
multiple
> as a base makes it hard to imagine that this will change quickly).
which might have to do with the fact that most analog clocks only have a
12h
scale (or is it the other way around? ;) ). >
12 hour days (& 12 hour nights) go back to at least the -7th century,
before clocks of any mechanical sort. They were taken over by most of the
world (from Babylon as far as we can tell) and standardized in various ways
in different cultures. But when better means came along, (candles,
clepsydra, pendula, mainsprings, etc.) they were measured off in 12s again,
despite rampant decimalism in most places and worse in some: 7 or 9, say).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Sat Sep 22 2001 - 01:51:10 EDT