User:Arcorann/The Thirteen-Month Calendar
Front matter
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Introduction
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Contents
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Brief
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Bibliography
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General Discussion
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The reason that the year begins on January 1 is a "pretty reason," as Lear's poor fool would say. Julius Cæsar, when he reformed the calendar in the year 46 B.C., evidently had in mind to begin the year with the shortest day. The winter solstice at Rome occurred in that year on the twenty-fourth of December of the Julian calendar; consequently the first day of the year would have fallen on December 25. But he delayed it seven days out of regard for prevailing customs and the superstitions of the people. As they had been accustomed to a lunar calendar, they would be better satisfied if the first year of the new calendar came in with the new moon. Accordingly the mean new moon was carefully computed and the new calendar had its beginning on the first of January, 45 B.C., at sixteen minutes past six in the afternoon.
Among all peoples, in all ages, it has been the custom to start the year, whether civil or ecclesiastical, with either the winter or summer solstice or the vernal or autumnal equinox. These times seem to mark the natural beginnings for reckoning the circuit of the seasons. The result of Cæsar's little stroke of diplomacy is that our year now has no relation to astronomic fact or logical reason. It has relation only to superstitions and political considerations which no longer exist. The history of the calendar is a struggle between human nature and arithmetic, the former not wanting to give in to the conclu-
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sions of the latter. This history, philosophically considered, not only serves to give us our bearings with regard to the problem of time measurement, but is a subject of considerable interest in itself.
A year consists of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45.51 seconds. From the standpoint of one who is trying to equip the universe with some practical system of time measurement, this sort of year is manifestly ridiculous. In a practical system of measurement each larger unit should be exactly divisible by the smaller unit next below it.
A month has a mean length of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 2.7 seconds. This is equally absurd. We cannot very well deal with months and years which begin and end with such utter disregard of the smaller units that we have these fractions of a day on our hands.
What, then, is a day, let us ask. That it is not an acknowledged part of a month or a year is a fact which the above figures make sufficiently plain. Nature did not intend it to be such. A day is a day. It is sufficient unto itself, and it is wholly unconcerned about any other unit of time.
In a foot there are a certain number of inches of equal size; and in a bushel the pecks are of like content. But what is a month? There are said to be twelve months in a year, but this statement means little when you consider that the months do not fit into the year except by being altered to a variety of sizes!
As man did not make days, months, and years he is not, of course, to be held accountable for them. But he did make hours, minutes, and seconds, and so it would seem that as a matter of convenience and common sense he would have chosen such smaller time units as would fit in with and be a common divisor of the units already established. And no doubt he would have done so if he could. But evidently there were difficulties in the way; for when we state the length of a year or of a month in
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fractions of a second we are simply saying that these larger units are not divisible into any sort of time that man has been able to discover or invent.
Doing as best he could, man divided the day into parts which were equal but which fitted nothing further; and while his work might seem careless, inconsistent, and entirely incompetent, it is not so bad by comparison. For neither do days fit into months, nor months into years, nor years into any astronomical cycle which the heavens exhibit. It is all as bad as our English system of weights and measures; and the whole world knows how illogical and inconsistent and altogether incompetent that is.
Contrary to what any mortal member of any academy would expect, the heavens are not constructed on the metric system! They do not countenance or make possible any such mechanical notions of perfection upon the part of man. Consequently the time is out of joint; and as man is a measuring and record-keeping animal there has been constant challenge to his intellect to set it right.
The whole truth of the matter is that Nature has offered us three different standards of time measurement—the day, the month, and the year. We have got to make a choice and abide by it. We may not accept them all as if they were harmonious facts and parts of a heavenly clockwork. That is just what they are not. Sun and moon revolve and rotate as they please; each is true to its own appointments. But the sun takes no care that years shall be divisible into months; and neither does the sun or moon time its evolutions to fit in with that standard of measurement which we call a day.
And this is a fact which is totally unacceptable to the mind of man. There is something about it which is obnoxious to human nature. If man, instead of God, had made the universe he would surely have made months that were exactly divisible into the year. This is a safe assertion in view of the fact that for ages he stuck to the moon as a standard of measurement while at the same
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time he tried to drive the chariot of the sun. We like to think that the universe is all working together, cogged and clocklike, with wheels that are proper multiples of one another—the whole acting as one big time system. If it is not so, then it ought to be so, and it is for us to bring the stars into harmony.
Of course there is but one way. That is to assume that they rotate and revolve thus and so. Consequently we have made the year a convenient length; and we have invented a system of leap years, leap months, and leap centuries to put us periodically into step with the facts. Finding ourselves compelled to deal in fractions of a day, we borrow from time, or extend credit to it, and then set things approximately right on a clearing-house system. We save up our scraps of time till we have enough to make a day, and we add it to a year; but as this is too liberal we pause once in a hundred years to take a day back; and as this is just a little too parsimonious we remember every four-hundredth year not to take the day that was coming to us. And for this temporizing with time we are hardly to be blamed. For the day and the year are each important to us; and when each insists upon being the sole standard of measurement, what else are we going to do about it?
Up to the time when our present form of calendar was adopted, all peoples, with the exception of the Egyptians, went strictly by the moon. A month was a month, an average duration of 29½ days; and it was of no very vital concern to them that twelve of those months amounted to only 354 days instead of a proper year.
To a people adopting a form of calendar the exact length of the year seems to be of no great importance. The year, with its four seasons, is supposed to bring a progressive change of climate; but when we consider that mere spells of weather make irruptions upon the seasonable climate and set the year backward or forward by days and weeks, an astronomer's information as to the
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exact number of days in a year would seem to be of mere academic interest.
But an exact foreknowledge of the phases of the moon is of immediate and practical importance. Besides lighting the way for travelers and holy pilgrims, and thus making itself of prime importance in the regulations of religion and commerce, the moon was so obvious a timepiece, and so easily determined in its comings and goings, that it naturally became the first standard of measurement. A discrepancy of a week or two between twelve lunar months and the length of a solar year would appear to make no great difference in practical life.
But such a discrepancy is cumulative. The error keeps growing; it adds to itself year after year; and pretty soon it amounts to months. The inevitable result is that the months rotate through the seasons. And no people, whether herdsmen or planters, can afford to go by dates that are completely out of harmony with the solar year.
It was a puzzling prospect that opened up before the eyes of our forefathers when, after much effort to construct a satisfactory calendar, they discovered the true nature of the difficulty. They made use of months that lasted from moon to moon; but no particular number of moons fitted into a year! When they tried twelve there was a considerable remainder of time which that twelvemonth did not fill out; consequently, their first month of the year, starting eleven days before the actual solar year was ended, would cause a falling behind of the season with regard to the supposed date. Each year would fall farther behind, the result being that the months revolved rapidly through the year. The practical effect of this was that a winter holiday, such as our Christmas, would get around to midsummer; and all the while they were carefully observing its month and date! And a summer festival would work its way, perforce, to the middle of winter! This was very embarrassing. It not only made
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an undesirable state of affairs with regard to religious and other holidays, but it was confusing to the planter, a certain day of the month meaning nothing in his line of endeavor.
This harassing state of affairs prevailed among the early Greeks and Romans and troubled the mind of the world generally. It continued to work confusion at Rome up to the time the present form of calendar was adopted. When Julius Cæsar took over the solar year from the Egyptians, computed time at Rome had gained eighty days on actual time. And yet the priests had been accustomed to throwing an extra month into the year whenever it seemed to need it, after the manner of a crew dressing the ballast in a ship.
One might easily suggest that, if a lunar twelvemonth is eleven days short of the actual year, it would only be necessary to add these eleven days to the end of the year or distribute them among the months. This suggestion is really foolish. It would put the month out of step with the moon; and what use would a lunar calendar be in that case? It must be borne in mind that a calendar must go absolutely by the moon or absolutely by the sun, else it will run completely astray and be no calendar at all. The ancients managed very cleverly so far as the moon was concerned. A complete lunation is approximately 29½ days. Their months therefore had twentynine and thirty days alternately. By following this rule strictly they struck an average that kept in close step with the moon and only needed a day thrown in at long intervals to correct the slight error. This was the practice of the Greeks. The problem was to find a way to correct this calendar to correspond with the annual journey of the sun and yet not get out of step with the moon. They could have lunar months which rambled through the seasons in a most confusing way, or they could have a year which was fairly true to the sun, but with months that had no relation to the moon. And it is not in human nature to be satisfied with either.
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Before submitting its conclusions, the Committee feels that it should point out the main, and undisputed, defects of the present Gregorian calendar, i.e.:
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The suggestion of the week and the month as a subject for discussion before the Royal Statistical Society arises from two circumstances. 'The first is that, in the course of last year, the Chief of the United States Weather Bureau announced that the Bureau was in possession of observations of weather in the United States carried on systematically by automatic records, or eye-observations twice daily at least, for a period now nearing fifty years. The Bureau naturally wished to make up its mind as to the best method of grouping the observations for statistical purposes before embarking upon the vast task of presenting the results as a representation of the climates of the United States. The solution suggested by Dr. Marvin, the Chief of the Bureau, is to employ the week of seven days, extended to eight days for one week (or for two weeks in leap year) and to group the weeks into fortnights or "months" of four weeks.
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Five different methods are being used by concerns to overcome the defects which have been indicated. Each one of these methods will be discussed showing the advantages and disadvantages.
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The most desirable change which can be made with the least dislocation of our present calendar, and which is incorporated in most of the proposed methods of reform, would be to have the same day of the year always fall on the same day of the week. As there are 52
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weeks plus one day in a year of 365 days, and plus two days in a leap year, by adding this extra day or days, and not considering or designating them a day of the week or month, every day of the year will always fall on the same day of the week.
New Year's day, which is observed as a commercial holiday in nearly every part of the civilized world, seems to be by general consent the one best adapted to be made the non-week day in every year. There is not the same agreement in the proposals, however, as to the position in the calendar which Leap Year day, the extra non-week-day in leap year, is to occupy. It seems extremely desirable that it should be the last day of the year. Only in this way can the proposed "fixed calendar" deserve the name. To place it following New Year's day, or between the end of June and the first of July, as has been frequently suggested, would alter the position in the calendar of every day following it in that year, and one of the greatest advantages of a fixed calendar in astronomical and nautical calculations, banking and other reckonings, would be lost.
To have a second extra day during the holiday season at New Year's should be acceptable to all nationalities, while a holiday of no religious or commemorative significance in the middle of the year, would be both inconvenient in the commercial world, and interrupt a busy season in the industrial world. Placed in the holiday season as the last of the year, and therefore next to the other non-week-day, New Year's day, it will also make each half of a leap year the same length, 183 days. "Leap Year day" should undoubtedly be the last day of the year, no matter what other reform is adopted.
Having disposed in the above way of the extra day or days in the year over the even 52 weeks, the same day of the year will in future always fall on the same day of the week, and it only remains to consider how best to subdivide these 364 days into months. Of the methods
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The international fixed calendar plan. Proposed by Moses B. Cotsworth, F. G. S., F. S. A., F. C. A., of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Liberty Calendar plan. This plan provides for the setting apart of New Year day in each year and making it an independent legal holiday, which is not included in any week or month. Also, the setting apart of the extra day in leap years as leap day and likewise making it an independent legal holiday. It further provides that each seventh day shall become leap year Sunday.
It further provides for the omission of such other leap year days as shall be necessary to harmonize the calendar year with the true solar year. It divides the remaining 364 days of each year into 13 months of four complete weeks of seven days each, beginning each week with Monday.
Swiss plan. This plan sets aside each New Year's day and each leap year day as independent legal holidays, and provides for the omission of leap year day in all centennial years the number of which is not a multiple of 400. This plan divides the remaining 364 days into four quarters of 91 days each, each quarter containing one month of 31 days and two months of 30 days.
This plan was proposed and advocated in the convention by Dr. A. F. Beal, of the Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C.
John Robertson plan (first Scottish plan). This plan also sets aside New Year's day and leap year day as independent legal holidays. It then provides that the first two months of each quarter shall contain four weeks each, while the third month of each quarter shall
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The present projected reform of the calendar is essentially different from the Gregorian one of 1582. Then there was question of cementing the calendar year closely to the solar year. For this purpose it was necessary merely to correct the Julian period of leap years. This was done in such a happy way that the error, which can never be avoided in any system, amounts to scarcely one whole day in three thousand years. The present desideratum is not a correction of this error, but a greater uniformity within the calendar year itself. The same days of the month are to fall on the same days of the week. As to whether this is an elegant or inelegant procedure, this is not the place to decide. There is question merely of testing the ways and means of effecting it.
In the library of the Vatican Observatory there is a special case devoted to the numberless schemes for the reform of the calendar, that have been sent to this supposed central station since the World War. These schemes are not less divergent than were the answers of four centuries ago of emperors, kings, dukes, learned men, academies and universities, that were sent to the Commission of the Gregorian Calendar.
With one exception to be detailed later, all the new calendars agree upon one point only, and that is upon the insertion of blind or blank or zero days, or days that are not to belong to any week. As the solar year is about one and a quarter days longer than a full number of weeks, the new calendar, if it is to be a year of weeks, will have each year one day over and in leap years two. What is to be done with these supernumerary days? The simplest remedy, one that by-the-way called for the least
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In the collection and discussion of meteorological and many other statistics, "monthly means" play an important part. Although the irregular calendar month is not, for scientific purposes, an ideal subdivision of the year, its faults are not sufficient to outweigh the advantages of a unit so familiar to the general public. These monthly means, would, however, lose all their significance, if the calendar month did not, year after year, remain in nearly the same position relative to the tropical year. With the present calendar the range of this position for any one month is a day only, over a short period of years, except at the end of a century, when it may be nearly two days, and even over a long period of years it is less than two days. A range of this size is unavoidable, and is not large enough to affect very materially the value of monthly statistics.
Under the scheme of intercalated weeks, however, the range over even a small number of years would be a week, while at the middle or end of a century it would be eleven days (or even seventeen, but as regards this point see below), and the range over a large number of years would be eleven days. There would, moreover, be an odd week of statistics every fifth year, which could not be as easily disposed of as is the odd day in leap year at present. The present convenient system of collecting and presenting data by calendar months would have to
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be given up, at any rate in the case of climatological and other scientific statistics, and suitable units chosen, with reference not to the calendar, but to the tropical year. This would not only entail much additional work in the preparation of these figures, but would greatly diminish their value to the general public.
Searle's scheme could not fail to cause much inconvenience, too, in ordinary business life. For example, is the same yearly rent to be paid for a house or for business premises, over a year of 53 weeks as over one of 52? Will a man on a yearly salary receive the same for 52 weeks as for 53? His expenses will be appreciably higher in leap year. I can foresee difficulties, too, with the income-tax collector, regarding the assessment of the yearly profits of a business. An extra day in leap year might be passed over without adjustment, but hardly an extra week.
Where accounts are kept, and salaries paid, monthly, the extra week would also tend to complicate matters, and to create confusion.
It might be objected, that the present calendar months vary in length among themselves, and that, nevertheless, no difficulty is experienced in keeping monthly accounts, or in paying monthly salaries. Why then should there be any difficulty in variable years? But over a very few months, the variation in the length of a month practically averages out, while it would take five years to average out the variation in the year.
I cannot see that these objections to an intercalated week are in any way balanced by the merely sentimental advantage of unbroken weeks, plus perhaps a slight advantage to historians of the future in checking their dates. No reform of the calendar can be considered satisfactory, which varies the length of the calendar year, or its position relative to the tropical year, more than the minimum absolutely necessary.
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The importance of a uniform and simple calendar is not a question which affords any ground for dispute. Whether regarded from the point of view of the chronologist, striving to evolve order out of regnal years and intercalary months, or from that of a business man in Cairo, transacting affairs with clients who adhere severally to the Moslem, the Coptic, the Hebrew, the Julian, and the Gregorian calendars, the diversity of system from time to time, from place to place, and between creed and creed, is an exasperating and unmixed misfortune. The New Year festival is celebrated by the motley races which go to make up the population of Singapore on dates which extend over several months. In Constantinople, until quite recently, even the division of the day was a source of grave inconvenience, since the day ended at local sunset. The persistence of such anomalies shows how hard is the way of the reformer. Tradition and religious scruple, and even the mere inertia of custom, are leagued against him. From the point of view of the whole world, a far greater advance would be made by any large step towards the adoption of one universal calendar than by making small theoretical improvements in a particular system, however important that system may be. Whatever happens, it is certain that the Gregorian calendar in its main features will survive. For this reason alone its reform is not to be lightly undertaken. A universal appeal can only be based on fixity of tenure as a necessary condition. The French Republican calendar should at least be useful as an awful example. Changes in our calendar can only be admitted after their necessity has been absolutely proved, and then only with the utmost deliberation. It is not a matter in which a false step can be easily retraced.
Affirmative Discussion
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In contrast to the individual business viewpoint let us consider for a moment what the proposed change would mean to the biggest and most comprehensive business of all, namely, the governments of the civilized countries of the world. Take the United States government, for instance, undoubtedly the "biggest business" in existence. Consider its Department of Commerce which, under Secretary—now President-elect—Hoover, has been furnishing the business world with weekly and monthly information on conditions and trends both here and abroad—a service which has had a large part in building up the stability and prosperity of the nation and which, in view of the enormous expansion of business in recent years, is already faced with the need of providing even more exact information than it has hitherto been able to provide. And this more exact service cannot be completely rendered until the sources of information of the Department of Commerce are based upon a calendar in which, in the words of Doctor Burgess, Director of the Bureau of Standards, "nominally equivalent periods of time are actually equal and comparable." The lack of such a calendar seriously inflates monthly export and import totals, because of our unevenly recurring twenty-ninth, thirtieth and thirty-first days and the consequent fifth Saturdays and Mondays which inflate totals as much as 10 to 13 per cent.
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Negative Discussion
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The subject of calendar reform is one to which considerable attention is being given at the present time. It has apparently reached the somewhat dangerous stage when articles of the type appearing in the Sunday magazines are being written regarding it, for the purpose of creating public sentiment in favor of some change which, merely by virtue of its departure from established custom, can be heralded as a reform irrespective of its nature or consequences.
The present calendar, however, is so closely interwoven with a multitude of the details of our modern civilization that no change should be contemplated without serious consideration of its every aspect. It is a matter concerning which accountants should have a very definite opinion, and the expression of that opinion should make itself heard in the council chambers where the question of calendar reform is being discussed.
It is significant that the Babson organization regards the adoption of the thirteen-month year as practically the inevitable outcome of the present deliberations. Accountants should, therefore, be prepared to discuss the necessary implications of this plan and to indicate to their clients what results may be expected to accrue to them individually from its adoption. They should also express and give reasons for their preference for any
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It must have come as a surprise, possibly a shock, to many to learn that we may shortly be asked to suffer all the inconvenience and confusion of a catastrophic alteration in the calendar on grounds which seem altogether trivial. In the first place, the calendar months now in use have by long association become enshrined in literature as the very impersonation of definite stages in the seasonal progression and retrogression of natural phenomena, and it would be sheer vandalism to break this association, and renounce our literary heritage, without far graver practical cause than can possibly be shown.
In the second place, every calendar system must be framed with reference to the four natural landmarks of the year, namely, the solstices and equinoxes, and it is eminently desirable that the two solstices, and the two equinoxes, which stand opposite one another in the natural year, should not be assigned dates which are unsymmetrically disposed to one another. In the proposed system of thirteen months, the solstices would stand 6½ months or time-units apart, instead of a whole number as in the present system, and no month would be located diametrically opposite another as at present, viz. December to June, March to September, and so on, along the
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earth's orbit round the sun. This arrangement would offend the artistic sense of any one with a vivid appreciation of the fact that our fundamental division of time, the year, is not an arbitrary unit but one based on a grand cycle of Nature.
Thirdly, it is said that meteorologists and astronomers would welcome months with equal numbers of days, and no doubt they would, one and all, if they could order everything to perfection. But apart from the labour that would be involved in preserving the continuity of the climatological record, involving the translation of one calendar into the other, think of the confusion that would arise in making comparisons between two systems which both have the same names of months! We should be perpetually having to think and specify whether it is the old January or the new January we are considering, and so forth. It would be just as though, when the new barometer unit the millibar was instituted to replace the inch, the name "inch" had been retained for the new division. Far better would it be to have an entirely new set of calendar names so that the old names would retain their habitual meanings. It is always open to astronomers and meteorologists to invent a system for any special technical purpose for which it may be required; but probably not many of them would take the narrow view and wish to disorganise the world on that account.
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The only way of making a really satisfactory reform of the calendar, and one to which I think indeed many people have aspired in the past without much success, is to accelerate the sun and retard the moon. If one could only make the year 360 days and the lunar month 30 days, the consideration of an ideal calendar would be a very simple proceeding. The question of the calendar might be regarded as primarily an astronomical one or an ecclesiastical one, but nobody who has had to do with meteorological statistics can be indifferent to any
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- ↑ From article by Charles D. Stewart, Hartford, Wisconsin. Atlantic Monthly. 137:10–22. January, 1926.
- ↑ From Article Brief Chronology of Calendar Periods. Congressional Digest. 8:97–8. April, 1929, with additions from the National Committee on Calendar Simplification and other sources.
- ↑ From League of Nations. Special Committee of Enquiry into the Reform of the Calendar. Geneva. 1926.
- ↑ From paper by Sir Napier Shaw, Sc.D., F.R.S., before the Royal Statistical Society, May 19, 1925, Royal Statistical Society. Journal. 88:489–97. July, 1925.
- ↑ From Folsom, M. B. Devices for Making Statements and Statistics Truly Comparative. p. 5–8. American Management Association. New York. 1927.
- ↑ From article Reform of the Calendar, by Carl Reinhardt, Cobalt, Ontario, Canada. Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Journal. 16:105–11, March, 1922.
- ↑ From Eleven plans submitted to the first national convention in the United States to discuss the reform of the calendar, held at Washington, D. C., February 7 and 8, 1922. United States, House. Committee on the Judiciary. Modification of the calendar: hearing on H. R. 3178. p. 23–5. 67th Congress, 2d Session. February 9, 1922.
- ↑ From article Reform of the Present Calendar, by William F. Rigge. Based on an article in the Stimmen der Zeit, vol. 106, nos. 3 and 4, 1923–24, by J. G. Hagen, of the Vatican Observatory. Popular Astronomy. 32:129–33. March, 1924.
- ↑ From article Reform of the Present Calendar, by H. Jameson, Colombo Observatory, Ceylon. Popular Astronomy. 32:416–17. August, 1924.
- ↑ From article Reform of the Calendar, by H. C. P. Nature. 86:281–2. April 27, 1911.
- ↑ From pamphlet "B" by M. B. Cotsworth, Director, International Fixed Calendar League. p. 1–15. Washington, D.C.
- ↑ From Address by George Eastman, Eastman Kodak Company. Rochester, N.Y., before the United States Chamber of Commerce, October 18, 1927.
- ↑ From article Progress Toward Calendar Simplification, by Isabel Keith Macdermott, Managing Editor, Bulletin of the Pan American Union. Bulletin of the Pan American Union. 62:1234–42. December, 1928.
- ↑ By Dr. C. F. Marvin, Chief of United States Weather Bureau. From pamphlet Do We Need Calendar Reform? by George Eastman. p. 49–52. Rochester, N.Y. 1927?
- ↑ From article by Herbert C. Freeman. Journal of Accountancy. 43:161–70. March, 1927.
- ↑ From article by L. C. W. Bonacina, Hampstead. Nature. 111:289–90. March 3, 1923.
- ↑ Minority report by Henry D. Sharpe and Stanley H. Bullard. Chamber of Commerce of the United States. Committee on Calendar Reform. Calendar Reform, p. 18–19. Washington, D. C. 1929.
- ↑ From discussion by Colonel E. Gold, D. S. O., F. R. S., Assistant Director of the Meteorological Office, at a meeting of the Society on February 21, 1923. Royal Meteorological Society. Quarterly Journal. 49:147–8. July, 1923.
- ↑ From discussion by Colonel E. Gold, D. S. O., F. R. S., Assistant Director of the Meteorological Office, at a meeting of the Society on February 21, 1923. Royal Meteorological Society. Quarterly Journal. 49:147–8. July, 1923.
- ↑ From article by A. L. Candy, University of Nebraska. Science. 61:286–7. March 13, 1925.