Aydın Tiryaki (2026)

The history of humanity is a chronicle of our attempts to perceive nature and render it measurable. However, this endeavor has not always followed a smooth path of progress; it has been a constant tug-of-war between the practicality of ancient traditions and the rationality of modern mathematics. The time and measurement units we use today are the result of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and, at times, radical revolutions.

The Legacy of Time: Why 24 Hours?

The division of a day into 24 hours and an hour into 60 minutes is a legacy from eras before the metric (decimal) system was even conceived. The choice of Ancient Egypt to divide day and night into 12 segments each, combined with the sexagesimal (base-60) number system of the Babylonians, remains one of the strongest strongholds in our modern digital world.

The primary reason for this persistence is the mathematical advantage of “divisibility.” While the number 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5, the numbers 12 and 60 have far more divisors, such as 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. This makes it significantly easier to divide time into quarters, halves, or thirds in daily life. The failure of the “Decimal Time” system tried during the French Revolution—which aimed to divide a day into 10 hours and an hour into 100 minutes—is a testament to the fact that human biology and social habits do not always bow to theoretical rationality.

The Metric Revolution and Engineering Friction

The transition to the metric system for length and weight can be considered the absolute triumph of rationality. The International System of Units (SI), which took firm root in France by 1840 and was adopted in Turkey through a radical revolution in 1931, simplified the language of engineering by ensuring consistency between units (1 dm3 = 1 Liter = 1 kg of water).

However, this transition created a significant “dual-world” problem for generations of engineers trained in the 1970s and 80s. Students who completed their secondary education entirely within the metric system suddenly found themselves confronted with American-published textbooks in university, introducing them to concepts like BTU, PSI, Rankine, and Pound-mass. In an era where computer access was limited and calculations were performed via mainframes or basic scientific calculators, unit conversions became the single greatest source of error in engineering projects.

The Terminology Trap: Centigrade or Celsius?

This conflict between units has led to significant terminological erosion, not just in technical calculations but also in language. The most typical example is the continued use of the term “Centigrade” instead of “Celsius.”

In 1948, the 9th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) officially retired the term “centigrade” from formal literature, adopting “degree Celsius” in honor of its creator, Anders Celsius. The name “centigrade” was abandoned because it conflicted with “grade” as a unit of angular measurement and lacked a scientific attribution to a person. Nevertheless, this change largely remained within academic circles, and old habits in social memory have continued to supersede scientific standards.

Media Blunders: The “Fahrenheit” Fallacy

The most tragicomic reflections of this unit confusion appear in mass media. In hasty translations from English, the failure to distinguish Fahrenheit from Celsius leads to absurd statements such as “he was burning with a 100-degree fever” (C = (100-32) / 1.8 = 37.8) or “he was freezing in 35-degree weather” (C = (35-32) / 1.8 = 1.6). These errors demonstrate that unit awareness is not just a technical detail but a fundamental filter for general knowledge and logic.

Conclusion

Today, while the world stands on the rationality of the Metric System (SI), habits stemming from colonial history and cultural persistence (as seen in the UK and USA) continue to create a “Tower of Babel” confusion between units. For an engineer, a unit is not merely a suffix following a number; it is the language of a natural law. Using this language correctly is not just about preventing calculation errors; it is a mark of respect for the universal heritage of science.

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A Note on Methods and Tools: All observations, ideas, and solution proposals in this study are the author’s own. AI was utilized as an information source for researching and compiling relevant topics strictly based on the author’s inquiries, requests, and directions; additionally, it provided writing assistance during the drafting process. (The research-based compilation and English writing process of this text were supported by AI as a specialized assistant.)