The measurement of time in minutes and seconds has been used for thousands of years. The concept of dividing an hour into minutes and seconds can be traced back to ancient civilizations.
The division of an hour into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds originated with the ancient Babylonians around the 3rd millennium BCE. The Babylonians used a base-60 number system known as sexagesimal, which influenced the division of time into these smaller units.
This system was later adopted by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The use of minutes and seconds as subdivisions of an hour became widespread in the Western world during the medieval period and has been in use ever since.
It's important to note that different cultures and civilizations had their own methods of measuring and dividing time before the standardization of minutes and seconds. For example, ancient Egyptians used a sundial system, dividing the day into 12 daylight hours and 12 nighttime hours, while ancient Chinese used a system of water clocks with varying hour lengths.
However, the specific use of minutes and seconds as smaller units of time within the framework of hours has a long history dating back several millennia.