Ke (unit)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ke (Hanzi: 刻; Pinyin: kè) is a traditional decimal time unit lasting approximately a quarter of a western hour. Traditionally it is equal to 14 minutes, 24 seconds (14.4 min) or one-hundredth of a day. For its entire recorded history of two or three millennia the ke had been used in China alongside duodecimal units of time.
The ke divided a day into 100 equal intervals thus forming a true centiday (cd).[1] The French revolutionaries in the 18th century were unaware of the successful adoption of decimal time using the ke and did not utilize the familiar quarter of an hour in their reform.
Alongside the ke, the ancient Chinese kept time with double hours (Traditional: 時辰; Simplified: 时辰; Pinyin: shíchen) also known as watches. Because one cannot divide 12 double hours into 100 ke evenly, each ke was subdivided into 60 fen (Hanzi: 分; Pinyin: fēn)). Additionally there had been various reform attempts to redefine the ke to 96, 108, or 120 so as to divide evenly into 12 double hours. During the Qing dynasty and at the time of the arrival of Jesuit missionaries, the duration of the ke was finally redefined to 96 in a day, or one fourth of a western hour. Today ke is still commonly used in China to refer to a quarter of an hour.
[edit] See also
[edit] Reference
- ^ According to the Shuowen Jiezi" from Xu Shen, "漏以铜壶盛水，刻节，昼夜百刻。” (translation: Drop waters from a copper/bronze container with water inside. The time spent is measured. We can thus divide a whole day into 100 measures.)
Other references:
- Ronan, Colin p.247-250 in Walker, Ch. ed.: Astronomy before the telescope. Brit.Museum P., UK (1999). ISBN 0-7141-2733-7
