Mario Arnaldi wrote: <<there are many ideas about the origin of the octaval system of measurement of time, the most written is an Anglo-Saxon origin, but there are people that suppose a Scandinavian one. This eight hours were called also "tides" in ancient Saxon language, and what I know is that that word doesn't mean tide like today, but simply something like "space of time". The new maritime meaning came later maybe just because every tide come almost every three hours. Today English still say "morning tide", "noon tide" and "evening tide" to call the space of time around the morning (from sunrise to nine a.m., almost), aroud midday and toward the sunset (from three p.m., almost, to sunset).>>
It's interesting to note that Scandinavian (and some other) languages use the word 'tide' and derivations of it to mean 'hour'.
