We are all accustomed to the fact that there are 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in one hour. And, it would seem, it has always been so, but if we return to pre-Petrine times, we will see that then the time was counted in a completely different way, but this is how I will tell you in this article.
In those already distant times, for example, on the Spasskaya Tower, as in all of Russia, there was a clock that was called the “Russian clock” throughout the rest of the world and nothing else.
And the fact is that on the dial of such a watch there were not 12 (usual now) divisions, but 17. And at the same time the dial itself was rotating. And the only hand was a ray of the sun, fixed in the upper half of the clock.
So there were 17 divisions on the dial because then day and night hours were counted separately.
As dawn began, the daytime report began, and after sunset, the nighttime report began. At the same time, a special person served at each clock, who was engaged in the translation of the clock to the starting point at dusk and dawn.
And 17 divisions was because this is the maximum number of light hours in summer.
Moreover, if we look at the images of the Spasskaya Tower, we will see that there were two dials, the lower one showed the time, but on the upper, instead of the dial, there was a zodiacal circle, that is, it was an astrological clock.
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With the coming to power of Peter I, Russia took a pro-European direction, and all watches were replaced with the European standard.
But not everything was eradicated and remade. Traces of the old times still remain in the Russian language.
After all, many of us still say, for example, "three in the afternoon" or "two in the morning", despite the fact that we already mean a completely different time, but we use the old expression.
And remember this expression "What time is it?" Now we mean by this "how long", and earlier the picture was as follows:
As soon as dawn came, the clock rang once, thereby announcing that the first hour of the day had begun, two bells ringing informed that the second hour of the day had passed, etc.
That is, when the sun went down, the bell rang 1 time and thus the first hour of the night was announced.
Now remember this expression "I just came."
As you can see, it would seem that in such simple expressions traces of the old - Russian time, which we have already forgotten, appear.