https://www.thenews-messenger.com/story/news/local/2022/09/21/timing-is-everything-why-24-hours-to-day-and-60-minutes-to-hour/69503622007/

By 1,500 BCE, Egyptians were using sundials to divide the period of daylight into 12 segments. One explanation for their choice of 12 comes from their recognition there are about 12 lunar cycles (new moon to new moon) per year, which is also the reason most early cultures divided the year into 12 or 13 lunar months of 354 or 384 days.

A more entertaining possibility suggests 12 stemmed from the number of joints on the four (non-thumb) fingers of one hand.

the clock and the AM/PM system makes much more sense when you count from 0.

0am 1am 2am 3am ... 11am

0pm 1pm 2pm 3pm ... 11pm

instead of:

12am 1am 2am 3am ... 11am

12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm ... 11pm

the ancient people that invented the clock were programmers all along??

Becasue there was no one inventor of the clock.

12 hours of daylight existed (ancient Sumer) about 4,000 years before the modern clock (medieval Europe)

Even when clocks were invented, it was hundreds of years before they also showed minutes, and another hundred or so years before they showed seconds.

Day doesn't start at 12, it ends at 11:59 before turning back over to 00:00

Personally I'd argue for base 36 time!

36 hours, each consisting of 36 minutes, each consisting of 36 seconds.

Lets you treat time as a 0-Z number with two decimal points, the day ends at Z.ZZ at night, plus base 36 is SUPER conveniently divisible, which jives really well with how most folks actually consider how much time they need to do whatever or what time it is.

This was one of many things the French fixed with their revolution but was cruelly taken away by the reactionaries. Decimal time

VIII. Each month is divided into three equal parts, of ten days each, which are called décades... The day, from midnight to midnight, is divided into ten parts or hours, each part into ten others, so on until the smallest measurable portion of the duration. The hundredth part of the hour is called decimal minute; the hundredth part of the minute is called decimal second.

Funniest teardown of it I've ever seen: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0QVPUIRGthI

Sure, let’s make a 24 hour clock and cram everything on there, that will be easy to read from across the room for sure 😏

This system was made by sexagesimal gang

Like it was smarter to write in base 10, multiples of 12 such as 60 and 24... * roll the eyes *

The day starting at 1 is much, much, dumber than a 12 hour clock.