TheHermit: thanks for a great write up. I have one quibble to make.
>The reason for 360 divisions is simple, it is based on the physical
>measuring instruments which were available to them. In other
>words, at the time that the division of the circle became a
>convention, they could represent each quadrant with sixty
>divisions. To go beyond that to 120 divisions was beyond the
>limits of their technology.
A quadrant is actually a quarter circle, i.e. 90 degrees, or 90
divisions. Could you look this back up and find out what the real
story is? (how about 6 regions of 60 degrees? 3 regions of 120?)
>Thus the Greek system used in astronomy was a mixed
>one: the whole part of the number was represented in the
>decimal nonpositional system while the fractional part was
>in the 60-base positional system--not a very logical solution
>by the creators of logic! Following their happy example we
>continue today to count hours and degrees (angular) in tens
>and hundreds, but we divide them into minutes and seconds.
Ha! That's who we gets to thank for that nasty conversion.
Fortunatly, it's not a common one in my program... Otherwise I'd be
pulling out the old time machine and telling 'em off!
ERiC