PDF Ebook Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar By Duncan Steel
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Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar By Duncan Steel
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- Sales Rank: #1107044 in Books
- Published on: 1999-10-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.38" h x 1.30" w x 6.02" l, 1.83 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 422 pages
- ISBN13: 9780471298274
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Amazon.com Review
"A calendar is a tool," the historian of science E.J. Bickerman once observed, "which cannot be justified by either logic or astronomy."
Duncan Steel, an English space scientist, extends that argument in Marking Time, a broad-ranging history of the Western calendar--a chronological system that is logical after a fashion, but strangely flawed all the same. Steel begins his account by considering George Washington's dual birthday, which he celebrated as falling on February 11, 1731, but Americans celebrated as February 22, 1732. Both, Steel shows, are correct, the discrepancy owing to a later calendrical reform that parts of the world have yet to catch up to (so that Russia's October Revolution, by non-Russian standards, occurred in November). Steel examines the long history of attempts to give the calendar a basis in astronomical fact, shows how the advent of the railroad brought with it the need for a system of standardized mean time, examines the likeliest dates for the birth and death of Jesus, and plucks countless fascinating oddments from the historical record. He doesn't shy away from advancing controversial ideas, one being that the meridian time of Washington, D.C. may be a more useful world standard than that of Greenwich, England--and not merely for political reasons. Neither is he afraid to use sometimes difficult mathematics to prove his points, giving his book a depth that many other popular studies of the calendar lack.
With the dawning millennium, time is much on our minds. This is a book to satisfy idle curiosity, settle dinner-table arguments, and simply enjoy. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
Australian astronomer Steel (Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets) appears to have packed three disparate books into this single volume: a general history of the development of the calendar system, a more advanced version larded with astronomical information for the science buff or professional, and a reassessment of why England settled the mid-Atlantic coast of North America. According to Steel, Elizabeth I's colonization activities were part of her maneuvering against Pope Gregory XIII. Well aware of the Gregorian calendar's flaws, English scientists thought that if they developed a superior calendar, it would help effect a rapprochement with European nations fence-sitting in the quarrel between London and Rome. Possession of territory on the 77th meridian, in the vicinity of what is now Washington, D.C., was crucial, because English calendar reformers considered it to be "God's longitude." Steel's account of this grand, somewhat daft scheme makes an intriguing study in its own right, yet it gets lost amid a tangle of unrelated facts. He advances other interesting theories with abundant background information to back them up: that Jesus was born in April 5 B.C.E. and that there was no room at the inn because it was Passover, not because of an empire-wide census; that the Star of Bethlehem was a comet; and that some major celestial event occurred around 3000 to 4000 B.C.E. because so many of the world's calendar systems began around that time. Steel seems to have never met an interesting fact he didn't like to repeat, and this unfortunate habit bogs down an otherwise excellent study of calendar systems. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A topical but pedantic study of how our calendar's development has owed as much to human choice as scientific precision. Australian astronomer Steel (Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets, 1995) explains the origins of the Western calendar. It's a story of incremental change, with contributions from such famous figures as Julius Caesar, The Venerable Bede, Pope Gregory XIII, and Isaac Newton. Steel contends that our ``imperfect'' calendar is a product of ``the intricacies of astronomy, history, and human foibles.'' Other civilizations have chosen different calendars. The ancient Egyptians, for example, based their calendar on the flooding of the Nile. Islamic nations use the moon. By necessity, Steel's narrative is as much about history as science. We learn that Julius Caesar decreed the 365-day year and divided it into months. Alas, the Julian calendar created problems because it was slightly too long. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decreed the Gregorian calendar, which deleted ten days from the old system. Some Protestant nations, like England, rejected the Gregorian calendar until the 18th century. While astronomers will find Steel's narrative lucid, the non-scientist can expect some heavy lifting. For example, Steel tells us that the ancient Greek astronomer Callippus ``suggested that the year should be precisely 365.25 days long on average, and invented a cycle of 4 X 19 = 76 years from which one day was deleted, the 76 years thus lasting for (4 X 6,940) - 1 = 27,759 days spread over 940 months.'' This sort of sentence is sure to try the non-mathematicians' patience. That said, Steel provides some fascinating history, such as how daylight savings time originated as a wartime necessity and how Greenwich Mean Time became the universal standard. With the year 2000 on the horizon, Steel hits the shelves at an opportune time; unfortunately, the general reader will have to look elsewhere for a more accessible history of our often illogical calendar. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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