Who invented days, weeks, months, years etc and when were they invented?
924049
Don't know the full answer to your question. But I am pretty sure we used to have only 10  months.  This is apparent if you study the Latin names of the months. September meaning 7th month, but it is actually the 9th month. October meaning the 8th month, but its the 10th month, and December meaning the 10th month, but it is the 12th month. \n\nI think this was changed in Roman times to include July which is named after Julius, and August after Augustus. The other extra month would then be November but not sure of the origins of the name November.
424465
Actually there are 364 + 1/4 days in a year. This has to do with the time that our Earth takes to complete one erbit around Sun. Now we have an arbiterary time period called week which has 7 days. So we have a normal year of 7 x 52 = 364 days. This leaves us with one 1/4 day per year left unaccounted. To make up for it, we have a leap year (365 days, 29 days in February) every four years.
80022
Twenty-four.\n\nAccording to modern usage.  There have been different divisions in the past used by different cultures: an eight-hour day, a twelve-hour day.
378736
Keep in mind, things like seasons, months, minutes, etc, are human contructs- we can define them anyway we like.  Earth doesnt really neatly divide the year into 4 parts, humans do-
900580
Lots of different ways.  There just needs to be an established convention.  And you need to make sure that no confusion can arise.\n\nYou can write it in a YYYYMMDD format, so today would be 20061107.\n\nYou can also express it in number of days since a certain date.  For example, you could make January 1, year 1 A.D. equal Day 1 and count from there.
169668
Only February has 28 days, and sometimes 29 days. This little rhyme was taught was I was a kid:   \n30 days have September\nApril, June and November, \nAll the rest have 31\nExcept February alone\nwhich has 28 days clear\nAnd 29 in each leap year.
1112501
Clock: inventor: In c.3500 BC, the gnomon—the first clock—is invented, probably in Egypt. It consists of a vertical stick or pillar inserted in the ground, the length of its shadow giving an idea of the time.
700155
Leap year.\n\nA leap year has 366 days.
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The Mayans, about 2000 years before the Romans. \nThe Mayan year is called a Haab and is 365 days, which is also represented by the 91 step pyrimids (91steps x 4 sides = 364 + the top = 365)
611884
Jason M - That has to do with months, not weeks.\n\nThe 7 day week is because of creation.
1064552
LONG ONE:\nSplitting the year up into 365 days was easy - everybody knew what a day was, and everybody knew what a year was, so they just counted up how many days there were in a year. This happened all over the world, many times, independently in different cultures. When one group of invaders came along to politely ask another group if they would mind, say, changing their religion, the agressors would say "You've got a day to think about it before we smash you up". It's unlikely these two nations would speak the same language, so this would take a lot of hand waving and pointing at the sun and moon to get across, but across it would nevertheless be gotten. There was no need to go into deep astronomical calculations, because the concept of a day was universal - even newly introduced mortal enemies who didn't have a word or belief in common, would at least have a measurement in common.\n\nGood story below\n\nBryan crooked his right thumb to touch the base of his right index finger (please follow along and do it, too), and said, in much the same way as a Sumerian might have, 4,000 years ago... "One."\n\nHe then moved up a notch - see that? Each of your fingers has three distinct segments. I never really noticed that! - and, touching now the middle segment of his right index finger with his right thumb, he said... "Two." \n\nI think you may sense where this is leading. By the time your right thumb has counted each of the three segments of his neighboring four fingers, you're up to 12. \n\nLong before people were reading with their lips, one imagines, they were counting with their fingers. \n\nSo a day was divided into 12 segments, called hours; and, too, the night. \n\nWhat a lovely story. It was all the ancient Sumerians' fault! The ancient Babylonians inherited this quaint practice, and presumably added their own 60-fetish to divide the hours into 60 minutes, and the minutes into 60 seconds. The Babylonian fascination with the number 60 is interesting in itself - so interesting, in fact, that it suggests the Babylonians were the ones who split up the day, using geometric series:
1096060
Astrology is the oldest of the academic subjects and has been practiced - with almost no changes - for more than 8000 years. They roots can be found in Mesopotamia and cities like Babylon and Ur were early centres. Wise men and priests studied the sky and the Universe very thoroughly and came eventually to their conclusions. They were the same people who also invented our time system, with 24 hours of 60 minutes, divided into 60 seconds. Greeks and Romans followed much later and adopted the Mesopotamian system, which had already been in use with the Egyptians, Sumerians and other nations. In fact there is no civilisation that has not developed her own form of Astrology or adopted an existing one.\nBesides the Mesopotamian (or Western) system, the other main system is the Chinese (or Eastern). While the Western zodiac has twelve signs dividing the year, the Eastern gives a whole year to each of the twelve signs.\nApart from that, the general principles are quite similar, and the findings of a person's Eastern horoscope do not contradict the findings of the same person's Western horoscope.
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To begin with it was a lunar calendar containing ten months, starting at the vernal equinox, traditionally invented by Romulus, the founder of Rome about 753 BC. However it seems to have been based on the Greek lunar calendar. The months at this time were\n\nMartius (31 days) \nAprilis (30 days) \nMaius (31 days) \nIunius (30 days) \nQuintilis (31 days) \nSextilis (30 days) \nSeptember (30 days) \nOctober (31 days) \nNovember (30 days) and \nDecember (30 days) \nThus the calendar year lasted 304 days and there were about 61 days of winter that did not fall within the calendar.\n\nThe first reform of the calendar was attributed to Numa Pompilius, the second of the seven traditional Kings of Rome. He is said to have reduced the 30-day months to 29 days and to have added January (29 days) and February (28 days) to the end of the calendar around 713 BC, and thus brought the length of the calendar year up to 355 days:\n\nMartius (31 days) \nAprilis (29 days) \nMaius (31 days) \nIunius (29 days) \nQuintilis (31 days) \nSextilis (29 days) \nSeptember (29 days) \nOctober (31 days) \nNovember (29 days) \nDecember (29 days) \nIanuarius (29 days) \nFebruarius (28 days) \nIn order to keep the calendar year roughly aligned with the solar year, a leap month of 27 days, the Mensis Intercalaris, sometimes also known as Mercedonius or Mercedinus, was added from time to time at the end of February, which was shortened to 23 or 24 days. The resulting year was either 377 or 378 days long. The decision to insert the intercalary month, and its placement, was the responsibility of the pontifex maximus. On average, this happened roughly in alternate years.\n\nThe system of aligning the year through intercalary months broke down at least twice. The first time was during and after the Second Punic War. It led to the reform of the Lex Acilia in 191 BC. The details of this reform are unclear, but it appears to have successfully regulated intercalation for over a century. The second breakdown was in the middle of the first century BC. This breakdown may have been related to the increasingly chaotic and adversarial nature of Roman politics at the time. The position of pontifex maximus was not a full-time job; it was held by a member of the Roman elite, who would almost invariably be involved in the machinations of Roman politics. Because a Roman calendar year defined the term of office of elected Roman magistrates, a pontifex maximus would have reason to lengthen a year in which he or his allies were in power, or to not lengthen a year in which his political opponents held office. It was only after Julius Caesar, who had been pontifex maximus for some years, seized absolute power that the calendar was overhauled, with the result being the Julian calendar.
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TWO WAYS TO REMEMBER HOW MANY DAYS IN A MONTH\n\nA RHYME:\n30 days has September, APRIL, June and November.\nAll the rest have 31 except February alone which has 28 or 29 on a leap year.\n\nA STRANGE COINCIDENCE\nClench your fists and put your knuckles together side my side. The first knuckle on the left of your left hand is January, then moving to the right there is a dip, this is February, then there is the next knuckle, March, etc. until you get to December on the middle of your right hand. All the knuckles are 31 days and all the dips are 30 (except February, which is an exception, as above)
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n 1577, Jost Burgi invented the minute hand. Burgi's invention was part of a clock made for Tycho Brahe, an astronomer who needed an accurate clock for his stargazing.\n\nPendulum\nIn 1656, the pendulum was invented by Christian Huygens, making clocks more accurate.\n\nWrist Watch\nIn 1504, the first portable (but not very accurate) timepiece was invented in Nuremberg, Germany by Peter Henlein.The first reported person to actually wear a watch on the wrist was the French mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). With a piece of string, he attached his pocket watch to his wrist.\n\nQuartz\nAccording to the Smithsonian "In 1927, Canadian-born Warren Marrison, a telecommunications engineer, was searching for reliable frequency standards at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Building on earlier work in piezoelectricity, he developed a very large, highly accurate clock based on the regular vibrations of a quartz crystal in an electrical circuit" - the first quartz clock.\n\nOrigins of "Clock"\nThe word 'clock' comes from the French word "cloche" meaning bell. The Latin for bell is glocio, the Saxon is clugga and the German is glocke.\n\nStandard Time\nSir Sanford Fleming invented standard time in 1878.\nAlarm Clocks\nAn early prototype of the alarm clock was invented by the Greeks around 250 BC. The Greeks built a water clock where the raising waters would both keep time and eventually hit a mechanical bird that triggered an alarming whistle.\n\nThe first mechanical alarm clock was invented by Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire, in 1787. However, the ringing bell alarm on his clock could ring only at 4 am. On October 24, 1876 a mechanical wind-up alarm clock that could be set for any time was patented (#183,725) by Seth E Thomas.\n\nSelf-winding Watch\nSwiss John Harwood invented the self-winding watch in 1923.\n\nClock Companies\nIn 1908, the Westclox Clock Company is issued a patent for the Big Ben alarm clock. The outstanding feature on this clock is the bell-back, which completely envelops the inner case back and is an integral part of the case. The bell-back provides a loud alarm.\n\nThe Warren Clock Company was formed in 1912 by Mr. Henry Warren as President. The company started by producing a new type of clock run by batteries, prior to that, clocks were either wound or run by weights.
662203
F S  S....the days of the week
403513
Odd, no one's mentioned this (maybe they all just assumed it was obvious?)\n\n"fortnight" is derived from "fourteen-night(s)"which should remind you of how long it is  [just say that fast, emphasizing the "Four"!] \n\n(As for being "old-fashioned" -- it may not be an everyday word, but it is hardly obsolete in America either!)\n\nUsage note (if you care): just as we can use 'week' when referring to a period of approximately that length, 'fortnight' does not always need to refer to precisely fourteen days (or nights!)\n\nFinal trivia notes: some languages count their days a bit differently.  Thus, in German, if someone is referring to something two weeks (14 days) away they will say (translated literally), "today in 15 days". (Similarly, for a week from today they could say "today in 8 days") That is, they are INCLUDING both today and the ending day in the count.