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http://www.howtogeek.com/trivia/the-humble-second-derives-its-name-from-what-source/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=300812
Answer: 16th Century Scientists
The history of time tracking and division extends well 4,000 years into the past–the ancient Egyptians divided day and night into 12 hours ans 2,000 years later Greek scientists in the second century were dividing the day into 24 parts–but the appearance of the second, both in measurement and in name, didn’t occur until the 16th century.
Scientists like Francis Bacon and Johannes Kepler used, in their writing, the Latin term “secunda pars minuta” or: the second diminished part. The first diminished part of an hour is, of course, the minute and a second is 1/60th of that 1/60th division. Although mentioned in scientific texts as early as the mid-16th century it wasn’t until the mid-17th century that time pieces were able to consistently and accurately tick off seconds.
It is not clear to me why they broke it into 60 minutes and 60 seconds vs 100.
Why are the “thirds”(or fourths as correctly pointed out by Ja Liu) measured in tenths of a second?
How did they originally come up with 12 hours in the first place vs a nice round 10?
If the word second had been un-capitalized it would have been clear that the author was not talking about the unit of time, but the adjective as in “second item in a list”.
The system has survived to the present day though its use for angular measure and time.
Why is 1/60th of a minute called a second?