Minute


The minute is a unit of time usually equal to of an hour, or 60 seconds. In the UTC time standard, a minute on rare occasions has 61 seconds, a consequence of leap seconds. Although not an SI unit, the minute is accepted for use with SI units. The SI symbol for minute or minutes is min. The prime symbol is also sometimes used informally to denote minutes of time.

History

first subdivided the hour sexagesimally into minutes, seconds, thirds and fourths in 1000 while discussing Jewish months. Around 1235 John of Sacrobosco continued this tradition, although Oxford University historian Philipp Nothaft thought Sacrobosco was the first to do so.
Historically, the word "minute" comes from the Latin pars minuta prima, meaning "first small part". This division of the hour can be further refined with a "second small part", and this is where the word "second" comes from. For even further refinement, the term "third" remains in some languages, for example Polish and Turkish, although most modern usage subdivides seconds by using decimals. The symbol notation of the prime for minutes and double prime for seconds can be seen as indicating the first and second cut of the hour. In 1267, the medieval scientist Roger Bacon, writing in Latin, defined the division of time between full moons as a number of hours, minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths after noon on specified calendar dates. The introduction of the minute hand into watches was possible only after the invention of the hairspring by Thomas Tompion, an English watchmaker, in 1675.