Ever wonder why the snooze setting on your alarm only doles out extra sleep in the form of nine minute increments instead of say 10, or even five?

It turns out that the seemingly arbitrary allotment actually pays homage to clockmakers of a bygone era. According to Mental Floss, before digital clocks, engineers were restricted to nine minute snooze periods by the gears in a standard clock. They could either set the snooze for a little more than nine minutes, or a little more than 10 minutes. And because the consensus was that 10 minutes was too long, and could allow people to fall back into a "deep" sleep, clock makers decided on the nine-minute gear.

So how important are those nine-minute tastes of extra sleep in the morning? Most doctors and scientists agree that they do more harm than good.

"The snooze button is the single worst invention for sleep ever," Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and sleep expert, told HuffPost. "When you hit it, you don't actually have the opportunity to get back into good, deep, refreshing sleep. You end up with light, fragmented sleep. So what ends up happening is people feel worse and worse the more snoozes they hit."