History of Time Calculations Articles Response

The way I think of an hour geometrically is as a block. I’m not sure where this came from, but it could have been from timetables in school. This is not very closely related to the idea of 60 min
utes in an hour. However, my imagery for a day is much more closely related to the idea of 24 hours as I think of days as a line with a notch to differentiate between time before noon and time after noon. I don’t have a notch to differentiate between before and after midnight since I think of the line as fading into and out of existence to represent the times when I am asleep. Once again, I am not sure where this way of thinking about it originated for me. I don’t feel that my perception/visualization of time is that close to how ancient peoples may have visualized it. I think likely any similarities between how someone from our time and someone from back then would have visualized time would come from the similarities between a sundial and an analog clock. I think a lot of people both now and back then would think of days as circular. However, I have never been great at reading analog clocks and use digital clocks when I can so this similar visualization to what might have been done in the past is not how I visualize time. 

I found the discussion in the second article about the lack of 0 interesting. It made me wonder how Babylonians delt with recording time specifically in cases where it was exactly on the hour (1:00, 8:00, 12:00, etc.). In modern times if someone were to say that something happened at 12, we would interpret that as it happening at 12:00 so I guess Babylonians could have done the same without needing 0. However, it would be more complicated if I said something took 12 as it would be unclear if it took 12 seconds, minutes, or hours. This could be solved either if the context was clear or by writing out 12 hours, 12 minutes, and 12 seconds. Instead of just relying on the number. To me from my modern perspective it still feels imprecise and that it could lead to confusion. This is the same with many of the ways that the lack of 0 would have affected Babylonians. In most cases I can logically understand that context would have been fully sufficient for them to know the difference between, for example, 1 and 60. However, my mind is so used to and comfortable with the modern system of numbers that I find that no matter how many logical arguments there are for how Babylonians would have coped with the lack of 0 I still find it disconcerting.