Re: Time on Fantasy worlds

On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:42:09 +0100, Jacey Bedford
<lookinsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:3JVl09uB0r9EFw0u@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

In message <MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet_3ff5b71a@fido
net.org>, Tina Hall <Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes

How do you say "after a few minutes", for example, in the
appropriate words? How "an hour later"?

In the trilogy, I've now temporarily decided on a number
of 'arrows', several per one minute (figuring an arrow
takes some time if you shoot it as far as you can, and
that being common enough to end up as a rough
time-unit). Don't know whether I like it, but it's
better than minutes.

You wouldn't normally shoot it as far as you can. The
useful interval is the time that it takes to nock, aim, and
release an arrow, and that's largely independent of
distance, as you draw the bowstring to the same point no
matter how far you're trying to shoot. The real constraint
is how much time you spend aiming. The figures that I've
seen for trained medieval English longbowmen run between 10
and 15 arrows per minute. Figure about 5 seconds per arrow.

[...]

For hours, I'm trying to re-word that so far. But I'd
like a normal word that can easily be associated with
roughly an hour. (Can be anything from 45 minutes to
twice that.)

<Snip>

A different term for a fraction of a day (smaller than a
quarter of a full day), is much needed when they're
travelling. At least on this trip.

There are mechanical ways of measuring shorter periods of
time - from egg-timers (4 minutes) to hourglasses. An
hour could be 'a sandglass' which if they've been using
it for long enough could easily have been shortened to
'a glass' or 'a sanglass'. Two sanglasses later they
crested the brow of a hill and...

And in fact 'glass' as a rough substitute for 'hour' is very
common in fantasy.

[...]

Or there's the time-honoured tradition of a candle marked
in segments,

And '(candle)marks' are also very common in fantasy.

Few of these are much use on the move, though, unless they
have sand glasses made out of something less breakable
than glass. (Carved from quartz?)

Does it really matter? If the unit 'a glass' has been
established, people will use the term roughly even when the
measuring device isn't available.

[...]

Just out of interest how did we arrive at the word 'hour'
and who decided we should carve the day up into units of
24 hours and carve hours up into units of 60 minutes and
minutes into units of 60 seconds?

<Hour> is from Old French <ure>, <ore>, from Latin <hora>
'hour, time, season', from Greek <hôra> 'season, time of
day, hour'. The division of the day into 24 hours is
ancient, being found in ancient Egypt and Sumeria.
Originally the hour was 1/12 of the time from sunrise to
sunset, so its length varied with the seasons; the similar
division of the night apparently came a bit later, though it
does go back to the ancient Egyptians. It's not clear why
12 was chosen. Reasons that have been suggested include its
easy divisibility into 2, 3, and 4 parts and the use of the
12 phalanges of the four fingers in finger-counting, by
moving the thumb from one to the next.

The 60 in the division of the hour into 60 minutes and the
minute into 60 seconds goes back to the Babylonian
sexagesimal (base 60) system of numeration and the earlier
division of the degree into 60 minutes of 60 seconds each,
but I'm not sure how old the practice of dividing the hour
into 60 smaller units actually is. The earliest instance
that I know of for sure is mentioned in the OED s.v.
<minute>:

When Honorius Augustodunensis divided the hour into
sixtieths in De Imagine mundi (early 12th cent.), he
called the sixtieths <ostenta>. These sixtieths were
sometimes called <minuta> by the end of the 12th cent.
(e.g. in the chronicle of Robertus de Monte), although
the word continued to be used of tenths of an hour at
least into the 13th cent.

Here's an Old English example of the older usage, explaining
the Latin term <minutum>: <Minutum ys se teoðan dæl þære
tide and ys gehaten minutum for þam lytlan fæce> 'Minutum is
the tenth part of the hour and is called minutum on account
of its briefness'.

There were also medieval divisions of time into points,
moments, and yet smaller subdivisions. A point was a fourth
(or sometimes a fifth) of an hour and contained ten moments.
'An hour [contains] foure poyntis, & a point ten momentis.
& a mo[m]ent twelve vncis and an vnce xlvii attomos' (late
14th c.) makes an atom the shortest unit; then 48 atoms make
an ounce, 12 ounces a moment, 10 moments a point, and four
points an hour. Let's see; in our terms that would make a
point 15 minutes, a moment 90 seconds, an ounce 7.5 seconds,
and an atom 0.15625 seconds, a length of time that I doubt
was very useful circa 1400!

Part of this scheme can be seen as early as the following
sentence from on Old English treatise: <On anre
æfenneahtlicre tide beoð feower punctas, ten minuta, fiftene
partes, feowertig momenta, be sumra manna tale> 'In one
equinoctial hour there are four points, ten minutes, fifteen
parts, forty moments, by some men's reckoning'. That is, a
point is a quarter of an hour, a minute is a tenth of an
hour, and a moment is a fortieth of an hour.

[...]

Brian
.

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