The Romans had a More Confusing Method than Daylight Savings Time
There are few in the US who do not begrudge the dreaded Daylight Savings Time. Springing forward or Falling back an hour leads to many headaches for the modern day person. There has actually been heated debate in recent years about whether or not this is an effective method for our society. But this next fact will probably make us appreciate this tradition a bit more. “TIL the Romans adjusted daily schedules to the sun. They divided daylight into 12 hours regardless of daytime, so that each daylight hour became progressively longer during spring and shorter during fall. The 3rd hour of the day in Rome was 44 min for winter solstice and 75 min for summer solstice.” – Obscure Fact by gabek333
The sundial (of course an effective instrument only when the sun shines) was refined by the Greeks and taken further by the Romans a few centuries later. The Romans also used water clocks which they calibrated from a sundial and so they could measure time even when the sun was not shining, at night or on foggy days. An hour was defined as one-twelfth of the daytime, or the time elapsed between sunset and sunrise. Since the duration varied with the seasons, this also meant that the length of the hour changed. Winter days were shorter, the hours were correspondingly shorter and vice versa in summer. At Mediterranean latitude, one hour was about 45 minutes at the winter solstice, and 75 minutes at summer solstice.