The first sundials were simply stakes placed in the ground that indicated time by the length and direction of the resulting shadow. Thanks to documented evidence of the Egyptians' use of sundials, most historians credit them with being the first civilization to divide the day into smaller parts. The civilizations that first divided the day into smaller parts, however, used different numeral systems, specifically duodecimal (base 12) and sexagesimal (base 60). In today's world, the most widely used numeral system is decimal (base 10), a system that probably originated because it made it easy for humans to count using their fingers. Lombardi, a metrologist in the Time and Frequency Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., takes the case.
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