Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar [Hardcover]

Duncan Steel (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471298271 | ISBN-13: 978-0471298274 | Publication Date: October 4, 1999 | Edition: 1

"If you lie awake worrying about the overnight transition from December 31, 1 b.c., to January 1, a.d. 1 (there is no year zero), then you will enjoy Duncan Steel's Marking Time."--American Scientist

"No book could serve as a better guide to the cumulative invention that defines the imaginary threshold to the new millennium."--Booklist

A Fascinating March through History and the Evolution of the Modern-Day Calendar . . .

In this vivid, fast-moving narrative, you'll discover the surprising story of how our modern calendar came about and how it has changed dramatically through the years. Acclaimed author Duncan Steel explores each major step in creating the current calendar along with the many different systems for defining the number of days in a week, the length of a month, and the number of days in a year. From the definition of the lunar month by Meton of Athens in 432 b.c. to the roles played by Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, and Isaac Newton to present-day proposals to reform our calendar, this entertaining read also presents "timely" tidbits that will take you across the full span of recorded history. Find out how and why comets have been used as clocks, why there is no year zero between 1 b.c. and a.d. 1, and why for centuries Britain and its colonies rang in the New Year on March 25th. Marking Time will leave you with a sense of awe at the haphazard nature of our calendar's development. Once you've read this eye-opening book, you'll never look at the calendar the same way again.

Editorial Reviews

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 422 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 4, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471298271
• ISBN-13: 978-0471298274
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,018,076 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, flawed, and offensive, November 18, 2003

By 

Nicholas Dujmovic (Vienna, Virginia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar (Hardcover)

This book's treatment of calendar issues is marvelously interesting, but I was constantly distracted and often offended by the author's all-too-evident contempt for people of faith. He proudly proclaims himself an atheist--OK, fine, lots of decent people are--but then asserts a superiority over us sots who do believe in God. For Christianity, Mr. Steele reserves a special animosity, and it affects his judgment and harms the veracity of his narrative. The mistakes and misinterpretations are too numerous to mention, but they include:

"The date of Easter stems in part from an original need to provide a full moon for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem." [No, early Church fathers actually discouraged pilgrimages.]

He thinks "pope" is derived from "pontifex maximus."

"Until quite recently no festivities were supposed to occur on Christmas day." [Maybe in England]

Steele says Christianity and sun worship were intertwined because churches used to face east, toward the rising sun. [uh, no, it was symbolic; an early name for Christ is the Orient from on High]

Does not realize that about half the Orthodox Churches use the Gregorian calendar for most church events.

He invariably calls early Christians "Gentiles." [most, initially, were Jews]

"The single factor which has caused most controversy and division in the Christian religions...is the calculation of the date of Easter." [preposterous; has he never heard of the Reformation?]

Seems to think that the Great Council of Nicaea was called to resolve calendar issues. [no, it was to address the Arian heresy]

Mary was a "peripheral figure" in Christianity until the 10th century. [4th century councils defined her importance]

He describes Advent as a feast. [it's a fasting period]

Even on nonreligious matters, there are many mistakes that suggest a cavalier approach to scholarship. Steele thinks "degaussing" neutralizes the magnetic field on a ship [no, it compensates for it]. He asserts that the USSR imposed the same time within its borders [no, it had 11 time zones]. As an Australian, he can be forgiven for thinking that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution. I just wish Steele had approached non-astonomical matters with the same care and respect he uses for his own field.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A best seller by an articulate expert on time, September 18, 2001

By 

M. Mcfarland - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar (Paperback)

This is a comprehensive and flowing account of the development of the world's adopted calendar. It is, by far, the best book I've read on the subject of time keeping. The so-called 'best sellers' that everyone seems to have read can't hold a candle to the breadth of experience contained here.

Steel's style may be a bit too chatty for some and too full of anecdotes about his youth in England and his experiences in the US and Austrialia. But then the author is a seriously good astronomer and this topic involves some pretty lateral concepts. He keeps you on board by making it fun and there's a detailed appendix at the back where all the relevant astronomical details are introduced in an easy style .... just in case you aren't an astronomer.

Marking Time's main aim is to explain why the Julian calendar was replaced. The modern calendar designed under Pope Gregory was built to reflect the length of time it takes the earth to pass between successive vernal equinoxes in March. Since the vernal year is almost constant, Pope Gregory's calendar is pretty accurate in tracking the time span between vernal equinoxes. The Julian version was a first approximation and therefore suffers from great inaccuracy over the centuries.

There were calendar proposals made by others in the middle ages that were even more accurate. Why were they rejected? Steel tells you why.

Steel also has an interesting religious-political theory for why the British finally adopted the calendar for it's empire in the mid-eighteenth century. It's all to do with the 77th meridian and Protestant England's fight against the Catholic church. I'd never read this stuff before - or his theory that universal time might be better measured from the US east coast - and was gripped. The freshness of his style is what made this book so memorable.

Marking Time's other aim is explain why you can't build a calendar for all the ages. It simply isn't possible. The earth's orbit around the sun is slowing down. So what is accurate today clearly won't be in the future. The lunar orbit isn't constant either so a lunar based calendar won't solve your problem. In any case, a day is only 24 hours long on four occasions in a year and the year itself can be defined in more than one way depending on whether you're looking at the sun or the stars.

After reading this book you'll realise there are a lot of very clever people in the world and also a lot of very silly laymen writing books on subjects they clearly don't understand. Duncan Steel isn't one of the silly people. You'll learn a lot from Marking Time that will fundamentally change the way you look at the world ........ and your watch.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best book on calendar I've seen, June 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar (Hardcover)

With the year 2000 came quite a few books about the history of the calendar. I've read quite a few of them, and I can say that Daniel Steel's book is by far the most informative of them; it is also remarkably well written, especially considering the complexity of the problems surrounding the development of our calendar, which the author does not shy away from.

I'll mention one issue here, because it was new to me: it is difficult to say exactly what a year is! More to the point, there are several different definitions of what a year is, and they have different lengths. The number you usually see quoted (365.2522 days) is the "mean tropical year". But you could instead measure the (mean) time between successive vernal equinoxes, and you get a slightly different number (365.2524 days). The author makes the case that the Gregorian calendar was designed to match this second definition (because the date of Easter is tied to the vernal equinox). This means that the Gregorian year (365.2425 days) is quite a bit more accurate than most people think, at least if you accept its intended goal.