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 ...
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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...
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The Calendar Takes Shape in Mesopotamia
Overview
The calendar used today in the West has its roots in the system developed by the astronomers of Mesopotamia—and particularly the Mesopotamian ci...
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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...
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Calendars
There are three units of time which have a direct basis in astronomy: the day, which is the period of time it takes for the Earth to make one rotation around its axis; the month, which is th...
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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 Time...
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In the following excerpt, Richards summarizes the types, characteristics, and sources of various calendars.
Empirical Calendars
Men have ordered their affairs by the phases of the moon and the seasons...
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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 establ...
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In the following essay, Borst highlights the relationship between calendar-making and advancements in computational mathematics in the sixteenth century.
The age of perfection began with Canon Nichola...
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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 popular...
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In the following essay, Cressy evaluates changes in the Protestant English calendar occasioned by its transfer to the New World.
The English calendar amalgamated astronomical, classical-pagan, and tra...
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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 what h...
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In the following excerpt, Brévart analyzes fifteenth century manuscripts of a Volkskalendar—a collection of astronomical, seasonal, and biographical data.
In 1946, the Princeton Universi...
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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 assistant, ...
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In the following essay, Nobis details criticism of the Gregorian calendar reform by contemporary scientists.
This paper has a bearing not only on the history of chronology in particular, but on the hi...
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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 su...
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In the following excerpt, Poole examines the Julian calendar, its Gregorian reform, and the gradual acceptance of the reformed calendar in Protestant Europe.
Easter is a feast, not a planet. You do no...
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Calendar, Numbers in The
Calendars
Development of Calendars
Calendar
Calendars
