Mapping Time: The Calendar and Its History: Amazon.de: E. G. Richards: Englische Bücher

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The passage of day followed by night is so definite that few of us bother to think about calendars and just take them for granted. And yet, as E.G. Richards shows in his fascinating account of how time was mapped, calendars are not at all straightforward. Calendars are essentially human constructs, as Richards quotes "God made the days and nights but man made the Calendar". A calendar is an attempt to make sense of the chance events during the creation of the solar system which determined the variations in the Earth's rotation and orbit around the Sun. Many different calendar systems have been invented by various cultures and societies around the world over the last few thousand years. Some have laboriously constructed huge stone calculating machines like Stonehenge in England; others make do with much simpler devices. My own favourite is a string calendar from Sumatra--a square plate with 30 holes and a piece of string to thread through a hole a day. But how do the Sumatrans know when a year is up?

Without calendars modern life would be chaotic and highly dangerous. As Richards points out: "international trade would be almost impossible" without some uniformity. The extraordinary thing is that despite the proliferation of different calendars, there has been international agreement over the use of just one, which happens to be the Gregorian calendar.

E.G. Richards is a an English academic biophysicist, whose interest in calendars was sparked off by writing a computer program to convert dates from one calendar to another. Fortunately, after many years of research he has compiled this fascinating book for the general reader. The three parts of the book cover the theory behind calendars, their original variety from different societies over the ages, and finally the tricky business of converting from one calendar to another. There is something here for everyone although you will need to be fairly dedicated to negotiate some of the more mathematical parts. Various appendices provide astronomical constants etc., and there is a most useful glossary, further reading list, and index.

With the millennium in the offing, Richards reminds us that we will be celebrating the wrong date--January AD 2000 "is only 1999 years from the start of the Christian era, which began on 1 January of the year AD1, there being no year 0". -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

From Kirkus Reviews

The approach of the millennium has generated a spate of books on the history of our calendar. Here's an especially good one. According to Richards, the calendar originated in humanitys desire to track the natural phenomena on which life in primiti ve society depended. Seasonal cycles of crop growth and animal migrations relate to the sun; tides relate to phases of the moon; and the cycle of dark and light caused by Earth's rotation makes itself manifest every day. But the relationships among these three astronomical phenomena cannot be expressed simply. Much of the history of calendars has to do with compromises made in trying to juxtapose these three cycles. At the same time, in almost every culture, the religious impulse has imposed its overlay o n the calendar. Days of the week (an arbitrary but convenient division of time) were given names related to ancient gods or to planets associated with them spiritually; each of the major religions boasts its own calendar, with its own succession of season s and holy days. After outlining the science of calendar-making, Richards describes many calendars used over the ages, including the Mayan and Aztec, and the French Revolution's attempt to divorce timekeeping from religion. The mathematics of calendars is given due attention, especially the calculation of the day of the week for past dates, and conversions between calendarse.g., from our Gregorian calendar to the Jewish or Mayan counterparts. A final section discusses problems caused in Western calendars by the shifting date of Easter, estimated by a complex formula, and a major bone of contention among the various denominations. Appendices provide useful astronomical constants, the names of the days of the week in sundry languages, the French Revolutiona ry calendar, and a glossary of technical terms. Clearly written and filled with detail, this will be a strong contender in the calendar-book sweepstakes. (76 illustrations) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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Interesting but flawed 18. Mai 2000

Von David Adaskin

Format:Taschenbuch

Very interesting history of the major calendar systems used around the world, both in the present day and in the past. It also gets into the mathematics of how to convert between calendar systems, including algorithms suitable for computer programming. Unfortunately, there are numerous typographical errors in the narrative and in the algorithms! The word "temperature" where the author clearly meant "temperate", substitution of "*" for "-" in a formula, etc. So far, I have been able to correct the formula for computing the day of the week and the formula for computing the date of Easter. I'm not looking forward to tackling the other algorithms. Did anyone proofread this before it was printed? Maybe the publisher could put up an errata sheet on their web site.

Good for the history, but be prepared to do some algebra if you want to use the algorithms.

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one of the best books I read in 1999 5. Mai 2000

Von Francesca Jourdan

In this well-illustrated book, the author accurately presents lunar and solar calendars. A history of the Egyptian, Mayan, Chinese, Jewish, French Republican, Roman, prehistoric and present-day Gregorian calendars is provided. The author has also included commentaries about astronomy, writing, counting, the week, the month, the year and calendar reform. An excellent readable reference on a fascinating subject for the interested reader.

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Past Perfect 18. September 2001

Von Ein Kunde - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

One of several books written in anticipation of the millennium, "Mapping Time: The Calendar and Its History" by E. G. Richards suffers from an especially heavy burden of typographical errors. As can be seen on the author's own web page, the address of which also is incorrect, there are hundreds of errors, some of which affect the accuracy of the account. For example, on page 208, January 1 came to mark the beginning of the Roman civil year in 153 BC, not 158 BC, and was in response to the Second Celtiberian War in Spain. Rather than wait until the middle of March for consuls to assume office, the new year was moved to the first of January so the Roman commander could depart with his legions that much sooner. It is a pity that so many errors compromise an otherwise informative history. Until they can be corrected, a better introduction to the calendar is "The Oxford Companion to the Year."

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Erudite But Fun 18. Juli 2003

Von John D. Cofield - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

This is a nice examination of the different calendars and methods of mapping time that humans have employed over the centuries. On the surface it has the air of a dusty reference book, but inside the author is often witty and amusing as he covers the histories and backgrounds of different dating systems. I'm especially impressed by his inclusion of the different algorithms used to calculate dates, of Easter for example, which are marvelously complex. Most readers will never have occasion to use these algorithms, but its nice to know they're there. I also appreciated the charts and the glossary of the more obscure calendrical terms.

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Mapping Time: The Calendar and Its History [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

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