Why did we spit the day in half with AM and PM?

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Why not just use a 24 hour clock, like military time? I understand what am and pm mean, but why did we even start, why haven’t we switched so there’s never confusion?

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5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Ignore most of the answers before mine

The day has two parts, the sun is either rising or falling.

Sun dials. When the sun reaches its apex, it essentially resets on the sun dial and starts a new shadow on the other side. Thus, 1 pm.

Anonymous 0 Comments

We split the day originally because we lived our lives mostly in the daylight. It was convenient to mark time from sunrise to mid-day and then from mid-day to sunset.

We haven’t changed to a 24 hour clock because we’re used to the 12 hour clock, as cumbersome as it is.

I personally use a 24 hour clock.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of countries use the 24h format. Especially ones that don’t have English as their first language.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You may have noticed, a day contains a period of darkness, without sun, and a period with sun. Naturally this led to dividing the hours of a day into two periods at the middle or meridian of the cycle.
Also counting in military time in Roman numerals would’ve been more annoying than it already was.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Solar noon is easy to observe without instruments and it happens at about the same time regardless of season, it’s only off by 6 or so minutes, unlike sunrise/sunset which drift several hours. So it was just a natural split for ancient people to see time as before noon and after noon on their sundials or whatever. Another natural reason for splitting day into halves is night and day, but as I mentioned it’s harder to observe when that split is crossed.