Base 60

 I must say, it has never occurred to me to use base 60 as opposed to base 10 or 100. When giving it some thought however, it does make a lot of sense. The most obvious use of base 60 is time, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, but then 24 hours in a day? Seems interesting to me. It appears that this time system was invented by the Babylons, who derived this system from the Sumerians, who used it as early as 3500 BC (according to the Guardian). When reading about this, I wondered to myself, why not 100 seconds in a minute or ten hours in the AM and PM? It turns out that using twelve hours for morning and twelve for the afternoon or night is much more useful. Twelve is divisible by two, three, four, (not five), six, and itself. Ten on the other hand only has three divisors. Sixty also has twelve divisors. Sixty and twelve both have more divisors than any number below them (many of these facts are also courtesy of the guardian). It turns out my first thought that base 10/100 was superior to base 12/60 isn't correct. In fact, I'm glad that civilizations after the Babylons adopted this system, it seems to work pretty well.