Calendar Summary

Calendar, Numbers in The Calendars have always been based on the Sun, Earth, and Moon. Ancient people observed that the position of the Sun in the sky changed with the seasons. They also noticed that ... Read more

Development of Calendars Overview Keeping track of the passage of time has been a human preoccupation since the dawn of history. Calendars helped societies to understand and track the changing seasons... Read more

Calendar A calendar is a system of measuring the passage of time. Early peoples used the lunar month--the interval between a complete sequence of phases of the moon--to calculate time. Because a lunar... Read more

In the following excerpt, Philip surveys the historical measurement of time, reviews the development and reform of the Western calendar, and looks at several world calendars. I The Measurement of Ti... Read more

In the following excerpt, Stiles explores the difficulty of measuring time and the origins of the calendar. The Persistence of a Relic Does it not seem strange that whereas our civilization has est... Read more

In the following essay, Laroque investigates the origins and representation of folk festivals in the Elizabethan calendar. As E. K. Chambers says in The Medieval Stage,1 the student of English popu... Read more

In the following essay, Henisch studies the visual depiction of agricultural labor in the calendars of the Middle Ages. When a medieval artist was told to illustrate a calendar, he knew exactly wha... Read more

In the following essay, Alkon comments on eighteenth-century attitudes toward time and changes in the calendar. In January 1796, Neville Maskelyne, astronomer royal at Greenwich, fired his assistan... Read more

In the following essay, Duncan recounts the efforts of those involved in the Gregorian calendar reform, the technical difficulties they faced, and the reaction to their work. The patriarch has also... Read more