[time-nuts] good book on the history of calendars?

Magnus Danielson magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org
Mon Jan 5 04:08:22 UTC 2009


christopher hoover skrev:
> We have the wonderful Dava Sobel book on longitude and Harrison.   I'm
> hoping to find something equally as excellent and accessible on calendars.
> 
>  
> 
> Can anyone recommend a good book on the development of calendars, ideally
> from Caesar on?

There is one by Lance Latham called "Standard C Date/Time Library; 
Programming the World's Calendars and Clocks" ISBN 0-87930-496-0

While I am quite sure this book can be shot down for many reasons, it 
does attempts to cover many calendars and their revisions. It also 
attempts to do this in such a detail that a software implementation is 
possible and then do it. Target is in C and there is a companion CDROM.

Just to give you a hint, it describes subjects such as the Khwarizmian 
Calendar (structure 12x30 + 5 days) and Alexandrian Style calendars 
(structure 12x30 + 5 or 6 days, forming a quad of 365 + 365 + 366 + 365 
years, thus including leap year). etc.

The book has a rather lengthy reference list in the back and discusses 
to some extent the mappings. It attempts to use Julian dates as 
reference between various calender dates.

If you wish to implement a varity of calendars, this book should be a 
good startingpoint, if nothing else.

Cheers,
Magnus



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