Calendars
Precursor:
Using the search function on the website using the term 'clock' will take you to a rather interesting article. Marple Clock
This lies within the setion of the website termed 'Stories from the Archives' As the Archives are not defined and using a rather large paint brush, no pen nib, here is a two piece article, that deals with the genesis of calendars and that event of a late weekend both March & October, BST.
A reproduction of the Fasti Antiates Maiores, a painted wall-calendar from the late Roman Republic
The Fasti Antiates Maiores is a painted wall-calendar from the late Roman Republic, the oldest archaeologically attested local Roman calendar and the only such calendar known from before the Julian calendar reforms.
Our basic calendar was devised by Romulus, the first king of Rome, in 750 BC, long before Rome became a republic, let alone an empire. Admittedly there have been one or two changes since then but essentially it is the same. In 63 BC Julius Caesar changed it from a lunar base to a solar base which improved the time keeping, and shuffled some of the months around which made no difference at all. As a one-off he also added 67 days to bring it back to sync. One and a half millennia later, in 1582, another Roman, Pope Gregory XIII, introduced some changes to correct minor errors in the Julian calendar. They might have been minor over the course of a year but over 1500 years it meant that the calendar was ten days ahead of itself.
The day after October 4, 1582, is designated October 15 by order of Pope Gregory XIII
This was critical as it changed the calculation for the date of Easter – the most important date in the Christian calendar. It had been decided at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD that Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon following the Spring equinox. By the 1500s the equinox was occurring well before the nominal date of 21st March so something had to be done. Pope Gregory XIII decided to act.
When you are Pope, change can be quite a simple affair. The Papal Bull, Inter Gravissimas, took immediate effect within the Catholic Church and the leading Catholic countries – Spain, Portugal and France followed suit almost immediately. However, this was the time of the Reformation and many Protestant countries objected to adopting a Catholic innovation; they feared the new calendar was part of a plot to return them to the Catholic fold. Gradually, very gradually, Protestant countries began to adopt the new calendar – Prussia in 1610, Netherlands in 1700, Britain and Empire 1752, Russia 1918. The Catholic origins were downplayed, if not completely ignored with this ‘New Calendar’ (as it was called) but the whole world is now using this Gregorian calendar though often alongside a religious calendar.
However, there are still problems with it as most of our standard units of time are based on astronomical observations.
Day
The time of a full rotation of the Earth with respect to the sun. On average about 24 hours.
Month
The time interval between two consecutive occurrences of a particular lunar phase (full moon, new moon etc.) The average length is 29.53 days.
Year
The time for the Earth to rotate around the Sun. Approximately 365.242 days.
We can see already that these three measurements are entirely unrelated. But it gets worse:
Week
Usually a period of about seven days. The origin of the week is generally associated with the ancient Jews and the biblical account of the Creation, according to which God laboured for six days and rested on the seventh. However the period can vary. The Ancient Egyptians had a ten day week, as did the short-lived French Republican calendar.
(Clicking on this link hould allow you to see a live calendar showing the correct date and time according to Gregorian and French Republican calendars.) The peasants objected to the 50% increase in their working week and the idea was dropped by Napoleon after just 12 years. Still, there was a certain logic in the revolutionary idea; it made rather more sense than our present calendar. Twelve months of thirty days, each month having three weeks of ten days each. That left five or six days unaccounted for but these could be inserted at various points to mark holidays or important commemorations. Astronomical!
Perhaps the reason that this calendar failed to be accepted was that it wasn’t radical enough so here is a challenge for all Marple Local History Society members. Devise a calendar where the third Monday in every month occurs at standard intervals. The only rules are that there must be 365 days in a year and some of those days must be Mondays. Apart from that you can have as many months as you like or weeks, and there is no limit on number of days in the week. You can give them new names if you want to personalise your calendar. The winner will earn the undying gratitude of those members who like the certitude of coming to meetings every third Monday.
* If you’re not up to that challenge you might like to look at a working version of the French Republican Calendar by clicking here. It will tell you today’s date and the decimal time as well!
(It works best if you have a wide screen monitor. There has to be room for 10 days!)
Text: Neil Mullineux
British Summer Time
Willett’s hidden affect
Let’s kick-off this part with a well-known puzzle. What on earth connects these three items?
- (a) a Mr Willett
- (b) a popular beat combo Coldplay
- (c) a regrettable loss in March?
William Willett is doubtless familiar to you, but a brief revision lesson may do no harm.
A great lover of the outdoors, William Willett, a builder of average wealth, lived in Chislehurst. Willett was on horseback riding one summer morning in 1905 when, ruefully, he observed how many curtains remained drawn against the sunlight. A solution suddenly occurred to him: why not move the clocks forward before each summer began?
William Willett riding with daughter Gertrude
Willett was not the first to conceive such an idea. Indeed Ancient civilisations shortened and lengthened the day according to the season. The Romans had hours that could last 44 minutes during the winter, whilst summer brought 75 minute hours. George Hunter, an entomologist was scorned in New Zealand, in 1895, when he proposed a two hour shift. Six years later in 1901, King Edward VII put the clocks back 30 minutes at Sandringham so he could hunt for longer.
It was Willett who ensured DST would eventually come into being. A pamphlet by him, “Waste of Daylight,” was self-published in 1907. In this his suggestion was to incrementally advance time by four 20-minute periods in April, and reverse this in September. Along with the benefit of recreational opportunities, Willett wrote that this would lower lighting costs.
This proposal was popular with the likes of David Lloyd George and the young Winston Churchill, then president of the Board of Trade. However, crucially, there was a phalanx of opponents led by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.
A bill based upon Willetts notion was narrowly defeated in 1909 as were subsequent proposals. Toying with time was deemed too radical an action, even for the reforming Liberal government. Despite setbacks, Willett’s vigorous campaigning across Britain, Europe, and America continued until his death from influenza in 1915.
Just a year later, a revised version of his scheme was finally accepted due to the most extenuating circumstance of them all: war.
Britain experienced a severe coal deficiency two years into WWI, crippling its industries and domestic energy supply. “Not only was there increased demand to fuel the navy, railways and armaments industry, but Britain had to supply allies whose coalfields were German-occupied, plus thousands of miners had volunteered for service,” says David Stevenson, history professor at the London School of Economics.
Willett’s ideas promised relief: longer evenings and less demand for coal-powered lighting. After Germany ratified a DST bill on 30 April 1916, Britain promptly followed suit with its own Summer Time Act, passed on 17 May.
This story of a relatively unknown man affects us twice a year. An hour in spring is lost in the last weekend of March only to gain it back once more in autumn, the closing weekend of October. And the Coldplay connection you may well ask. One of Willett’s great-great-grandsons is Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay. The opening lyrics of their single Clocks – “the lights go out and I can't be saved” – contain a possible reference to DST.
William Willett is remembered in Petts Wood by a memorial sundial, which is always set on DST. The incription reads: "HORAS NON / NUMERO / NISI ÆSTIVAS" (Latin for "I do not count the hours unless they are in summer")Just remember as you lose an hour of Sunday 30th of March ‘there is no gain without pain’, spring is a coming as is April Fool!
*Popular beat combo, which originated as a synonym for "pop group", ia phrase that occurs in homegrown culture.
The Day of Change itself may have pitfalls. There’s the ritual of going round the house changing every clock, including that tricky one on the electric oven (thank God if your iPhone does the job for you). There’s also the comic potential of not knowing your partner has already put a clock forward, so that when you do it you end up an hour ahead of everyone else rather than an hour behind.
Lets draw a close to this discussion with a few facts about the palaver.
- During the Second World War, British Double Summer Time was introduced. In the summer we put our clocks forward by a whole two hours as a means of maximising productivity; and in the winter the clocks remained one hour in advance of GMT for the same reason.
- We turned our backs on British Summer Time in 1968 – although not the acronym – and adopted British Standard Time. In 1971, however, we reverted back to BST. Sorry, we mean British Summer Time. Confused?
As for Big Ben, well Secret London reveals all here
And British Summer Time at Petts Wood and Hawkwood
