State Duma deputy's commentary.

The State Duma will consider the bill "On the calculation of time" in the second reading on Tuesday, May 17. Commenting on this bill to ER.RU First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Industry Valery Draganov noted:
“The bill develops the provision of the Constitution, according to which the calculation of time belongs to the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. Until now, the issue of calculating time was regulated only by government decrees and departmental instructions.
The bill introduces the concept of "time zone". Prior to that, for the subjects of the Russian Federation, the definition of "time zone" was in effect. But this concept is geographical (time zones are limited by meridians), so it is not entirely correct to apply it to the territories of the regions.
It also establishes the procedure for referring to one or another "time zone" of the territory of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. This will be done by the government on the basis of a joint proposal of the legislature and the governor of one or another subject of the Russian Federation.
One of the most important articles of the draft law concerns the dissemination of information about the exact meaning of time.
For the operation of modern technical, information systems, data on the exact time is fundamentally important. For example, the GLONASS satellite system requires an accuracy of up to several milliseconds.
The bill establishes that information about the exact time is publicly available (with the exception of periods of wartime, mobilization), as well as the official characteristics of the exact time signals.
With the help of time signals, it is possible to set "legitimate" time with an accuracy of more than one millisecond. Many institutions use these signals. Precise time signals are used to control complex technical processes and for scientific observations. The consumer of single exact time signals are: computer systems and computer servers (control and monitoring systems for network equipment), equipment for transport networks and switching networks, billing and database servers.
In addition, the definitions of the concepts "calendar week", "calendar month" are fixed by law. This is important from a legal practice point of view. For example, the contract uses the wording "the contract must be executed within a calendar month." But there is no official definition. Therefore, disputes often arise whether it is possible to consider that this is just a month, say, from January 15 to February 15, or is it still a month from January 1 to January 31.
The most significant amendment that is proposed to be introduced into the bill in the framework of the second reading procedure is the rule on the abolition of the need to move the hands of the clock. Thus, the legislation will put an end to the issue of transition to "summer" and "winter time".
Deputies have been talking about this a lot over the years, various bills on this topic have been introduced. So the adoption of this norm is, without exaggeration, a historic decision.
It is justified both from a medical point of view and from the point of view of the logic of technological processes.
The remaining amendments are of a legal and technical nature.”

A calendar that answers the questions “What date is it today”, “What day of the week”, “When did this or that event happen”, “How many days, months and years have passed”, allows you to regulate and plan life and economic activity, which is especially necessary for people engaged in agriculture. However, the ministers of religion were also involved in the development of the calendar, therefore, in a number of countries, a purely lunar calendar is still used, in which the months wander through all the seasons of the year (the Muslim calendar).

In our time, there is no person who would not use the calendar - a continuous number system for large periods of time, based on the periodicity of natural phenomena, which is especially clearly manifested in the movements of heavenly bodies. The Latin word "calendarium" (calendarium) means "debt book". IN Ancient Rome debtors paid the interest due from them on the first day of each month, which was announced by heralds and was called "calends" (Calendae). The origin of the calendar can rightfully be attributed to the most ancient conquests of the human mind, that is, to the same categories as writing and counting.

Ethnographic sources confirmed that at different times different peoples different calendars appeared, but the same forms of economic life led to the formation of similar calendar systems as one of the forms of an ideological superstructure over the material basis of society.

So, many millennia ago, at the birth of human culture, the first very primitive calendars gradually appeared. Sunrise and sunset gave people the first and main measure of time - a day, and then a day. Day and night, light and darkness, used to seem completely opposite, like good and evil, and therefore, at first, days and nights were counted separately. When people did not know how to write, they marked the count of days with the help of conditional notches on a stick or knots tied on special cords for this.

Initially, the count of days and nights was limited to the first five numbers - according to the number of fingers on one hand. This is how the five-day, or "small" week was born, and later - according to the number of fingers on both hands - the ten-day "big" week arose.

Even in the very initial period of the development of human society, his labor activity was associated with continuously alternating changes of day and night - days, which are the first measure of time established by man. Later, the ancient Babylonians drew attention to the periodic change in the phases of the moon, which is easier to notice than the slow and gradual change in the position of the sun above the horizon during the year. So the second measure of time after the day was established - the month. Having learned to follow the phases of the moon, people at first did not know what a year was, and used only months to count time. Subsequently, with the transition from a nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary one, with the development of agriculture, they switched to counting time in years - the third measure of time. This is where the rudiments of calendar representations, reminiscent of modern ones, begin.

The task of the creators of the calendar includes the selection and determination of the main periods of time, the duration and their coordination with each other. Obviously, it is not so important to determine the length of the day itself, but to determine exactly how many days are contained in a month and in a year, that is, to express the length of the month and year in days and the length of the year in months.

Due to the incommensurability of the three main calendar periods - day, month and year - it is impossible to build a calendar that is ideally consistent with the apparent movement of the Sun and Moon, but you can choose a combination of these periods in which the calendar time account will be continuous, independent of observations and close enough to the true.

§ 16. Three types of calendars

As a result of attempts to harmonize the day, month and year, three calendar systems arose: lunar, in which they wanted to coordinate the calendar month with the phases of the moon; solar in which they sought to harmonize the length of the year with the frequency of processes occurring in nature; lunisolar in which they wanted to agree on both.

1. Lunar calendar. The most ancient system time accounts - the lunar calendar, which appeared several millennia BC; it was based on the time interval between two successive identical phases of the moon - the synodic month. However, the duration of the synodic month is not constant, mainly due to the ellipticity (in the first approximation) of the Moon's orbit and the displacement of the lunar nodes - points lying on a straight line along which the plane of the lunar orbit intersects with the plane of the ecliptic. It was gradually established that there are 29.5 days in the lunar month, and so that during the year the beginning of each month of such a calendar more accurately coincides with the new moon, its odd (called empty) months of the year must contain 29, and even ( full) -30 days. In this way, lunar year contains 354 days, i.e. it is 11.25 days shorter than the duration solar year.

The synodic month was of great importance in the calendars of the ancient peoples - the Babylonians, Chinese, Jews, Indians and others.

The lunar calendar is especially widespread in the countries of the Near and Middle East (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and other Muslim countries, where July 16, 622 AD, according to the old style, is taken as the beginning of the chronology).

The main disadvantage of the lunar calendar is the difficulty of reconciling it with the seasons, the duration of which is determined by the length of the tropical year, which is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46.1 seconds, and this value is not divisible without a remainder by the duration of the synodic month. In some countries, to bring the lunar calendar in line with the seasons, additional amendments were introduced into it, which greatly complicated the use of such a calendar.

The origin of the seven-day week, which is an intermediate unit between the month and the day for measuring time and approximately the corresponding quarter of the lunar synodic month, is also associated with the phases of the moon.

People noticed that each phase of the moon lasts about seven days, and therefore they divided the lunar month into four weeks each lasting seven days. With the development of astrology, the days of the week, which began at that time on Saturday, were given the names of the seven celestial "wandering" bodies: for example, they called Saturday the day of Saturn, Monday - the day of the Moon, Tuesday - the day of Mars, Wednesday - the day of Mercury, Thursday - the day Jupiter, Friday - the day of Venus and Sunday - the day of the Sun. Most of these names of the days of the week have survived to this day in a number of languages ​​​​of European countries (French, Italian, English, German, Scandinavian, etc.).

For many Slavic peoples, the name of the days of the week is associated with their serial numbers and some religious customs. So, for example, Sunday used to be called a week - a day on which they did not work. The week was followed by Monday - the first day after the week, Tuesday - the second day, Wednesday - the middle day, Thursday - the fourth, Friday - the fifth, and the name of Saturday comes from the Hebrew word "Sabbath", which means "rest", "peace". These names came to Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and other Slavic languages ​​from Bulgaria (Table 1).

2. Solar calendar. Having learned to follow the phases of the moon, people at first had no idea about longer cycles in nature, “did not grow up” to the concept of “year” and used only months to count time. Subsequently, with the transition from a nomadic to a settled way of life, with the development of agriculture, it became necessary to determine the timing of sowing and harvesting, which are associated not with the lunar month, but with the change of seasons. The need to foresee the onset of the seasons - winter, spring, summer and autumn - led to the emergence of a larger unit of time than the lunar month - the year, with a duration of first 360, and then 365 days. This great discovery of the Egyptians led to one of the first solar calendars, created in the fourth millennium BC. e. and being the prototype of many solar calendars. The year in the ancient Egyptian solar calendar consisted of 365 days, that is, it was 0.2422 days shorter than the actual one. The beginning of the year in such a calendar was considered the day of the first pre-dawn in a given year ( heliacal) the rise of the star Sirius, with which the onset of the summer solstice was associated at that time, and long-term observations of the rise of this star made it possible to establish that it then fell a few days earlier than the start of the Nile flood.

In this very convenient solar calendar, the year was divided into 12 months (Table 2) of 30 days each. At the end of each year, five additional days were added to it, and each month consisted of three large weeks of 10 or six small weeks of 5 days each and were called decades and pentads, respectively. The year was divided into three seasons of four months each. Since the year of this calendar is shorter than the tropical year by about 0.2422 mean solar days, in 1460 years the difference reached one year.

3. Lunisolar calendar. Another calendar associated with natural phenomena is the lunisolar calendar. It appeared very early in ancient China, and at the beginning of the first millennium BC. e. - in Ancient Greece. The structure of the lunisolar calendar is rather complicated; it is based on a tropical year, equal to 365.24220 days, and a synodic month, taken equal to 29.53059 days, i.e., in the calendar, the movement of the Moon is coordinated with the annual movement of the Sun. In such a calendar, the year consists of 12 lunar months of 29 and 30 days each, and to take into account the movement of the Sun, “leap years” are periodically introduced containing an additional 13th month, and it is entered so that the beginning of each calendar year, if possible, would coincide , for example, with the equinox. In this calendar, simple, 12-month years have 353, 354, and 355 days, and leap years have 383, 384, and 385 days, resulting in an almost exact coincidence of the 1st of each month with the new moon, and the average over the cycle ( the sum of some numbers of whole lunar months) the length of the calendar year is quite close to the length of the tropical year.

Such a calendar was used in Babylon, Judea, Ancient Rome, and is now used in the state of Israel and in the Christian church calendar when calculating Easter and related movable religious holidays (Paschal).

§ 17. Julian calendar

From the middle of the 8th century BC e. In the Roman Republic, they used a calendar consisting of 10 months. The first month, from which the year began in those days, was named Martius (Martius) - in honor of the god of war Mars. The name of the second month - Aprilis (Aprilis) comes from the word "aperio", which means "to open" ("to open"); this month the buds open on the trees. The third month was named after the goddess Maya (symbolizing the flowering of plants), the mother of the god Mercury, the fourth - in honor of the goddess Juno, the wife of Jupiter. Subsequent months were called serial numbers, starting from the fifth (for example, the current Russian name"September" comes from the word "september", which means "seventh"). In such a calendar, four months of the year had 31 days each, and the remaining six had 30 days each, so the original Roman calendar year had 304 days.

In the 7th century BC e. two months were added - the eleventh, named "januarius" in honor of the two-faced god Janus - the patron saint of agriculture, whose one face was turned forward and the other back, and the twelfth, whose name comes from the Latin word "februarius" ( Februarius) - purification, associated with the respective religious rite.

As a result of this reform, the year in the original Roman calendar was more than 10 days shorter (Table 3) tropical, or solar, year and consisted of 355 days. This duration of the Roman calendar coincided quite well with the duration of the lunar year, equal to 354.4 days. And this is no coincidence, since the Romans used the lunar calendar, for which the beginning of each month should coincide with the day of the first appearance of the moon after the new moon.

The seasons of the year, determined by the Roman calendar, did not correspond to natural phenomena. To eliminate this abnormality, i.e., in order to keep the seasons in their places and cope with the incommensurability of the solar year with the synodic month, the Romans began to insert an additional month into their calendar - Mercedon. Such a month had 22 or 23 days and was added every year. Therefore, the years alternated in length and contained 377 (= 355 + 22), 355 and 378 (= 355 + 23) days. Each quadrennium had two short and two extended years, and the average length of a year was 366.25 days.

The Romans inserted Mercedonium between February 23 and 24 - the last month of the year, that is, they did it in a very strange way. After February 23, the first day came - the calends of mercedonium, and when mercedonium ended, February continued again from the 24th.

It was entrusted to the pontiffs - special priests, specialists in counting days - to make insertions of mercedonia and determine its duration. It was entirely up to them to proclaim New Year Or wait for a better opportunity. They, of course, did what was best for them. In the end, the pontiffs so confused the calendar “bookkeeping” that they themselves could not figure it out and, as a result, owed the calendar 80 days. F. Voltaire (1694–1778) gave a very apt description of the state of the Roman calendar of that time: “Roman commanders,” he wrote, “always won, but they never knew what day it happened.”

In 46 BC. e. Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BC) took supreme power in Rome. He decided to stop the entanglement in counting the days. During his campaigns, Julius Caesar visited Egypt and knew that a simple, convenient and understandable calendar had been used there for several millennia. He summoned the astronomer Sosigenes from Alexandria and instructed him to improve the Roman calendar. The essence of the calendar reform carried out by Sosigenes was that it was based on the annual revolution of the Earth around the Sun. The average length of the year was set at 365.25 days, which almost corresponded to the length of the tropical year known at that time. To avoid fractional parts of the day, they began to count 365 days in three simple years, and 366 in the fourth (leap year). from January 1st.

It should be said here that the Romans counted the days of the month in the way that they often resort to now, counting how many days were left before the holiday, vacation, vacation, etc. In each month of the Roman calendar there were three days with special names: 1st number - kalends, 5th (or 7th) - nones, 13th (or 15th) - ides. All other days were defined as follows: the 2nd day before the March non, the 5th day before the April ides, etc. When the Julian calendar was introduced, an additional day was inserted before the 6th day before the March kalends, which is why it was called "bissextus" - "twice the sixth" ("bis" - "twice", "sextus" - "six"). The Greeks pronounced the letter “b” as “v”, which is why the word “leap” appeared in the Russian language.

Sosigen also ordered the number of days in months so that all odd months had 31 days each, and even months had 30 days each (Table 4).

However, before starting to count the days according to the new calendar, it was necessary to eliminate the "sins" - inaccuracies committed earlier by the pontiffs. All the days they “stolen” were counted and inserted into the day count. In addition to mercedony of 23 days, two more months - one of 33 and the other of 34 days - were placed between November and December. As a result, 46 BC. e. turned out to be unusually long. It was the longest year in the history of mankind; it consisted of 15 months (445 days). In the history of the calendar, it is known as the "disorderly" or "year of confusion." Later, after the death of Julius Caesar, the quintilis in which Julius Caesar was born was named "julius" (July) in his honor, and this calendar itself was called Julian. With the adoption of the Julian calendar, the Romans freed themselves from the dual system of counting time - according to the Moon and the Sun, and later this calendar became the basis for all subsequent chronological calculations.

After the improvement of the calendar by Julius Caesar, the pontiffs, while continuing to count the days, either out of ignorance, or deliberately, again strayed from the established order and began to assign leap years not in three years to the fourth, but in two to the third; as a result, the calendar account was again confused. Their error was discovered only in 8 BC. e., during the time of Julius Caesar's successor, Emperor Augustus (63 BC - 14 AD), who corrected the accumulated error. At the same time, the Senate of Rome decided to rename the eighth month of the year sextilis to August - in honor of Emperor Augustus in gratitude for correcting the Julian calendar and the great military victories he won that month. However, all these activities did not Julian calendar perfectly accurate: the year in it remained equal to 365 days and 6 hours, while the length of the tropical year averages 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46.1 seconds, that is, a year in the Julian calendar for 11 minutes and 13, 9 seconds longer than reality. Therefore, it lags behind the tropical year.

Although 11 minutes is a small amount, but for every 128 years and 68 days, these minutes, accumulating, form a whole day. Because of this, by the end of the XVI century. the spring equinox, for example, no longer fell on March 21, but on March 11, that is, the calendar error reached 10 days, and thus, in particular, the Easter holiday shifted from spring to summer.

§ 18. Gregorian calendar

By the middle of the XVI century. the question of the reform of the calendar became widespread and became so urgent that it was impossible to postpone it. In 1560, the astronomer from Verona Petrus Pitat, in order to reduce the difference in the gap between the Julian calendar and the tropical year, proposed introducing every 400 years instead of 100 leap days 97, leaving the years 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, etc. (numbers 17, 18, 19, 21 are not divisible by 4 without a remainder) without the day of February 29. Under this condition, the average duration of the calendar year turns out to be (303,355 + 97 × 356)/400 = 365.2425 days, which is only 26 seconds longer than the tropical year. However, this proposal was not accepted. And only in 1582, the former professor of canon law at the University of Bologna, Hugo Buoncampegni (1502-1582), who became Pope Gregory XIII in 1572, created a special commission of several clergymen and astronomers, to which he introduced Ignatius Danti (1536-1586 ) - a well-known professor of astronomy and mathematics at the University of Bologna at that time. This commission was charged with drafting a new calendar reform.

Roman brine Gregory XIII. Statue above the entrance to the Palazzo Public in Bologna. The portal was built in the 16th century. architect Gomaddo Alessi

After reviewing all the known and proposed options for the new calendar, the commission approved the project, authored by the Italian mathematician and physician Luigi Lilio Garalli (or Aloysius Lily, 1520–1576), professor of medicine at the University of Perugia. The draft of this calendar was first published in 1576 by Antonio Lilio (brother of the scientist), who took an active part in the development of the draft of the new calendar during the lifetime of its author.

Luigi Lilio

Christopher Clavius ​​was an ardent propagandist of the new calendar. The proposed draft calendar was adopted by Gregory XIII six years after the death of the author. In this regard, the pope issued a special bull (Fig. 14), according to which the count of days was moved 10 days ahead and a day after the day of Jupiter (Thursday) on October 4, 1582, when new calendar, it was prescribed to consider the day of Venus (Friday), but not October 5, but October 15, while maintaining the sequence of counting the days of the week. This immediately corrected the error that had accumulated since the Nicaean Church Council, which adopted the Julian calendar, and the spring equinox again fell on March 21.

Christoph Clavius ​​- an outstanding mathematician and an ardent propagandist Gregorian calendar. Engraving by Francesco Masini 1606 (Clavius ​​turned 69 this year)

The new calendar system was called Gregorian calendar or "new style", which, of course, is unfair and it would be more correct to call her after Luigi Lilio Garalli.

Rice. 14. Papal bull introducing a new calendar

The error of the Julian calendar for 400 years is 74 hours 53 minutes, not three days (72 hours); in the Gregorian calendar, over the same period, an excess of 2 hours 53 minutes accumulates, that is, in one year the error is 26 seconds instead of 11 minutes 14 seconds in the Julian calendar. Extra days in the Gregorian calendar accumulate in about 3300 years, and this is a huge period even in the life of entire peoples, not to mention the lives of individuals. This was the main advantage of the Gregorian calendar. A special medal was issued to commemorate the calendar reform (Fig. 15). However, the shortcomings of the internal structure of the calendar remained unresolved. Months have retained different durations, the beginning of each year, as in the Julian calendar, falls on different days of the week; therefore, the determination of the day of the week for a particular event requires special calculations.

Rice. 15. Medal commemorating the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. The inscription on the front side: "Gregory XIII the best high priest"; inscription on reverse side: "Year of correction 1582"

On the " a new style"In 1582-1583, in addition to Italy, Spain, France, Poland, Portugal, Holland, Luxembourg and Bavaria also crossed, in 1584 - Austria and Switzerland, in 1587 - Hungary, in 1610 - Prussia, that is, those countries where the Catholic Church dominated.

Much later, the Gregorian calendar was adopted by other countries: in 1700 it was adopted throughout Germany, Norway and Denmark, in 1752 - in Great Britain, in 1753 - in Sweden and Finland, in 1916 - in Bulgaria, in 1919 - in Serbia and Romania, in 1924 - in Greece, in 1925 - in Turkey, and in 1928 - in Egypt. In those countries where the Gregorian calendar was not adopted in 1582, by the beginning of the 17th century. the discrepancy between the Julian and Gregorian calendar years reached 10, in the XVIII century. - 11, in the XIX century. - 12, in the XX century. - 13 days.

Now the Gregorian calendar has become international, since it is impossible to do without a single calendar for all in external relations between states.

To convert Julian calendar (old style) dates, Nc, to the Gregorian calendar (new style), N n, it is necessary to Nc add days n, determined by the formula n = C - (C1: 4) - 2, where FROM is the number of complete elapsed centuries, and From 1- the nearest smaller number of centuries, a multiple of four.

For example, for the century from 1901 to 2000

n = 19 - (16:4) - 2 = 13.

When switching from the old style to the new day of the week, for example, January 15, 1928 according to the old style and January 28, 1928 according to the new style was Saturday.

Amendment Period n lasts from March 1 of the first year to February 29 of the hundredth year of the century according to the old style.

§ 19. Calendar of the French Revolution. Calendars of some countries

Republican calendar. On September 21, 1792, a bourgeois revolution took place in France, which abolished royal power and feudal orders and announced that from now on "all social acts will be dated the 1st year of freedom." Soon, a draft of a new calendar was prepared by an authoritative commission headed by Gilbert Romm (1750–1795), one of the most active figures in the French Revolution, about whom one of the historians later wrote: “Convicted for standing on the side of a hungry people, he escaped execution, piercing his own heart with a pocket knife. Well-known French scientists took part in the work of this commission - J. L. Lagrange (1736–1813), J. J. Lalande (1732–1807), G. Monge (1746–1818) and others.

Gilbert Romm

Each of the twelve months of the republican calendar contained 30 days. The rest of the days, which in the Gregorian calendar fell on the time from September 17 to 22, were given names in honor of the revolutionary-minded masses - the sans-culottes. So, the first san-culotide, that is, September 17, was called the holiday of Genius, the second - the holiday of Labor, the third - the holiday of Feats, the fourth - the holiday of Awards, the fifth - the holiday of Opinion, and September 22 - the sixth san-culotide, celebrated once every four years , dedicated to various sports games and competitions. The new revolutionary calendar was introduced throughout France on October 5, 1793, by a decree of the National Convention. This calendar abolished the era from the "nativity of Christ" and the established custom to consider January 1 as the beginning of the year. The convention decided to count the years from the moment of the destruction of royal power and the proclamation of the republic, that is, from September 22, 1792, which coincided that year with the day of the autumn equinox. The old names of the months associated with the names of Roman emperors and mythology were replaced by new ones proposed by Fabre d'Eglantil and reflecting natural phenomena, meteorological and agricultural conditions of the French climate zone:

Instead of the seven-day week, abolished as a relic of the old way of life, a new unit of time was introduced into the calendar - ten days, or a decade. The convention also adopted the names of the days of the decade, consisting of numerals and a particle "di", meaning "day", also proposed by d "Eglaitin (Table 5).

The introduction of the republican calendar was marked by the issuance of a special medal, on the front side of which the words “The Republic is one and indivisible. The French Nation”, and on the reverse side shows the Sun entering the constellation Libra, to the right of which are the signs of the constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius and the inscription “The beginning of the French era from the autumnal equinox September 22, 1792 9 hours 18 minutes 30 seconds in the morning Paris time” ( Fig. 16).

Rice. 16. Medal commemorating the introduction of the republican calendar in France. The inscription on the front side: “The Republic is one and indivisible. French Nation"

Ancient Chinese calendar. The history of the civilization of the peoples of the world testifies that in a number of countries at different times they used their own, often very original, calendar systems. So, for example, in China over three thousand years BC. e. The duration of the lunar month was set at 29.5 days, and the solar year at 365.25 days. In the ancient Chinese lunisolar calendar, the appearance of which dates back to the third millennium BC. e., the year was divided into 12 months of 29 and 30 days and consisted of 354 days, and to coordinate the changes in the lunar phases with the duration of the tropical year during the 19-year period (cycle), the 13th months were inserted seven times (in 3 -m, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 16th and 19th years of the cycle), each time after the winter solstice, and all months began with a new moon, i.e. in every 19 -year cycle was 7 years of 13, and in other years - 12 months each.

A similar cycle lasting 6940 days, proposed by the ancient Greek astronomer Metopes (about 460 BC - the year of death is unknown) and bearing his name, made it possible to coordinate the timing of the change in the phases of the moon with the duration of the tropical year with an accuracy of several hours.

Starting from the 17th century. in China, Japan and Korea, along with others, they used the civil luni-solar calendar, in which time is determined by 60-year cycles. Moreover, each first cycle contains 26,911, and the next three - 26,912 days each, which on average (out of four cycles) gives 365.1958 days a year. The duration of the synodic month was taken equal to 29.53066 days. Other Chinese calendars are also known.

After the formation of the People's Republic of China in China in 1949, the usual chronology and the common European calendar were adopted.

Persian calendar. The East has made a truly invaluable contribution to the treasury of world culture. Phenomenal, rare in their originality creations of scientists, writers, architects and astronomers have accumulated here for thousands of years.

Among the peoples of Central Asia, astronomy reached a particularly high development already in the 3rd century BC. The great Tajik poet and scientist - mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam (1040–1123) in the 11th century. created the most accurate solar calendar, in which there are 8 leap years for 33 years. The average length of the year in this calendar is 365.24242 days, which is only 22 seconds longer than the tropical year. Such an insignificant difference would amount to one day in 4500 years, i.e., the calendar was much more accurate than the Gregorian one. Khayyam's calendar was introduced in 1079 and operated in Iran until the middle of the 19th century.

Indian calendars. The calendar systems used in India are very diverse; among them one can meet solar, lunar and lunisolar, and in addition, until recently, there were several official civil calendars. In 1944, India solemnly celebrated the 2000th anniversary of the Samvat calendar, the most common in the northern and central parts of the country, the chronology of which begins from 57 BC. e. (the era of Vikram samvat, allegedly associated with the name of the ruler and national hero Vikram, about whose life, however, there is no historical information).

In the southern part of India, the Saka civil calendar was widely used, in which the number of years starts from March 15, 78 AD. e. (Saka era); The year starts around April 12th. In India, calendar systems with other eras are also used.

The variety of calendar systems in India introduced great confusion and inconvenience in relationships at home and at work, and all this turned out to be so significant that the country's government decided to carry out a calendar reform and introduced Unified national calendar, which provided for the onset of the 20th century on March 25, 1952 of the Gregorian calendar. March 25 was considered the first day of 1901 of the new calendar.

To develop all issues related to the introduction of a single calendar, in November 1952, a Reform Committee was established under the chairmanship of the greatest scientist - physicist and astronomer Professor Meghiad Sakh (1893-1956). The calendar was based on the Saka era, and the duration of the tropical year was taken to be 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds; in a simple year of this calendar, there are seven months of 30 days and five of 31 days (Table 6). Leap years are those years for which division by 4 is obtained without a remainder of the sum of the year of the era and the number 78. If the sum of these two numbers turns out to be a multiple of 100, then in this case the year will be a leap year only when the sum is divisible by 400 without a remainder. (Thus, leap years and non-leap years coincide with the corresponding years of the Gregorian calendar.) The year begins on the day following the day of the vernal equinox. So, 1910 of the Saka era began on March 21, 1988 of our calendar and ended on March 21, 1989. Indians divide the year into six seasons: spring, summer, rains, autumn, late autumn, winter.

Meghnad Sakha

By decision of the Government of India, the calendar was put into effect on March 22, 1957. However, almost every state still uses its own calendar. These calendars differ from each other in the number of months and days in each of them, as well as the date of the beginning of the year.

Mayan calendar. Until recently, only the countries of Africa and Asia were considered centers of world culture, but in recent decades, archaeologists have discovered another center of original culture, located in Central America on the Yucatan Peninsula. The main population here was once the Maya Indians. They achieved significant success in astronomy, chronology and chronology. The Maya created calendar systems quite different from other known calendars. Major events they celebrated their lives by installing stone pillars - steles, on which planets, constellations and dates were depicted with special hieroglyphs.

For religious purposes, they used calendars consisting of "short" years containing 260 days. The year was divided into 13 months of 20 days each, and the weeks in such a year contained 13 days each, denoted by numbers. For civilian purposes, the Maya used two calendars with "long" years containing 360 and 365 days, which were called respectively "tun" and "haab". The latter consisted of 18 months of 20 days each and 5 days, which were celebrated as holidays. Four years later, the first day of the new year fell on the same day of the month, but on different dates of the 13-day week. Prior to this calendar, the Maya Indians used a kind of lunar calendar with months of 29 and 30 days, while the year consisted of six months of six months; in each semester, the months were designated by serial numbers.

Muslim calendar. The lunar Muslim calendar is based on the average duration of the synodic month, equal to 29.530588 days or 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 2.9 seconds. In it, the beginning of each of the 12 months of the year, containing alternately 29 days (empty months) and 30 days (full months), should, if possible, coincide with the moment the narrow crescent of the young Moon appears in the west.

In such a calendar, 12 synodic months make up a lunar year consisting of 354 days, which is on average 11 days less than a tropical year, and in leap years - 12 days less.

The account of years in the Muslim calendar is conducted from the "hijra" - the migration of Muhammad (c. 570-632) and his companions from Mecca to Yathrib-Medina. The date of this event falls on June 16, 622 according to the Julian calendar.

In order for the phases of the moon to fall on the same number of months, it is necessary to have elongated - leap years with one extra day. If the duration of the synodic month is taken equal to 29.5306 days, then in this case the lunar year will be equal to 354.3671 days. The number of leap years is chosen depending on the desired accuracy of the calendar. The Turkish calendar has an 8-year cycle with three leap years, while the Arabic calendar has a 30-year cycle with 11 leap years. Indeed: 354.3671 × 8 = 2834.937, and 354.3671 × 30 = 10 631.013 days, in eight simple lunar years 354 × 8 = 2832 days, and in thirty - 354 × 30 = 10 620 days. The Arabic cycle calendar is more accurate, since its error for a 30-year cycle is only 0.013 days (with an accuracy of 0.001), and the error of one day in such a calendar accumulates only after 2500 years.

§ 20. History of the Russian calendar

When and where the first calendar appeared in Russia, history does not give an answer, since most of the written monuments of the period of Kievan Rus and earlier did not survive due to repeated fires and various invasions and wars. All this does not allow a complete picture of the early pages of the history of the civilization of the Dnieper Slavs. Some light on the history of our calendar is shed by the Ostromir Gospel (1057) - one of ancient monuments writing, which contains the Old Slavonic names of the months, partially preserved to this day in the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages ​​(see Table 7), and the Tale of Bygone Years, referring to 1113, compiled by the chronicler Nestor (years of life are unknown) - a monk Caves Monastery (Kyiv), one of the centers of ancient Russian culture.

In Russia, the first attempt to somehow regulate economic life was made in Svyatoslav's Izbornik (1076).

In 1828, for the first time, the work of the deacon and domestik (head of the choir. - L. Kh.) of the Anthony Monastery Kirik (1110 - death unknown) was published for the first time, “Instruction on how a person knows the reckoning of years”, in which for the first time in Russia, methods for determining large periods of time are described. The "Instruction" contains some concepts from astronomy, for example, about the lunar year and others. Kirik's work makes it possible to determine the number of years, months and days that have elapsed from the "Creation of the World" to 1136, the time when this manuscript was compiled.

Archaeologists in 1889, during excavations near the village of Romashki (Kiev region), found a jug dating back to the 3rd–4th centuries. n. e., girded in two rows with various signs, which, as now established, are a real calendar.

In 1975, in the village of Yamg, Ishkashim district, Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (Tajikistan), large sizes stone structures that are part of the solar calendar. This calendar was used several hundred years ago by farmers of the mountainous region to determine the most favorable dates for field work.

In very distant times in Russia, as in other countries, wooden calendars were used. Even at the end of the 19th century in some provinces of Russia there were wooden calendars, representing a bar with six side faces about half a meter long with a thickening in the middle. Notches were made on each side according to the number of days for the next two months, and the most important religious holidays were marked with conditional signs against the corresponding notches.

In 1491, in Krakow, the then capital of Poland, the “Hours” was printed in Cyrillic - a church book with a calendar-saints, but in Russia handwritten calendars were used for a long time. The first handwritten calendar in the present sense appeared in Russia in 1664. In 1670, a calendar called "Annual painting or month" was translated from Polish for Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1629-1676). In subsequent years, until the end of the XVII century. in Russia they used transfer calendars. They were translated in the Polish order and intended for royal use. Translation calendars, in addition to some astronomical information, also contained astrological predictions. There, for example, in one of the calendars, translated in the Polish order, we read: “New and old calendar celestial currents for the summer of the Lord 1689 Homely for sevba and for vaccinations, for the sick to correct their health, healthy for doing great deeds, dexterous for catching the beast, it is very necessary. Translation calendars were not widely used in Russia.

Until the 10th century And. e. the new year in Russia began with a new moon on the first spring days, close to the spring equinox. At the end of the X century. (in 988) Ancient Russia adopted Christianity, and at the same time the chronology used in the Byzantine Empire from the “creation of the world”, that is, from 5508 BC, and the beginning of the year began to be celebrated on March 1. Since that time, the Julian calendar was used in Russia, consisting of 12 months, the names of which were associated with natural phenomena (Table 7); while the same months in different parts of the country had different names. In honor of this event in the life of the state, a project of a special medal was developed. Only from 1492 - "seven thousand since the creation of the world" - the new year in Russia began to be celebrated everywhere according to the church calendar - September 1. This went on for over two centuries.

A new reform of the calendar took place during the reign of Peter I. On December 20, 7208 (1700 according to the Julian calendar), the heralds announced the royal decree to the Muscovites to the sound of drums:

“December 20. Nominal. - About the celebration of the New Year. The Great Sovereign indicated to say: the Great Sovereign is known to Him not only in many European Christian countries, but also in the Slavic peoples, who agree with our Eastern Orthodox Church in everything, like: Volokhi, Moldavians, Serbs, Dalmatians, Bulgarians and His Great Sovereign's subjects Cherkassy and all the Greeks, from whom our Orthodox faith was adopted, all the peoples, according to their lata, are counted from the Nativity of Christ eight days later, that is, Genvara from the 1st day, and not from the creation of Mipa, for many different things and counting in takh ltah, and now 1699 comes from the Nativity of Christ, and from the 1st of the next Genvara, a new 1700 year will come, and a new centenarian year will come: and for that good and useful dela, the Great Sovereign indicated that from now on to count in the Orders and in all sorts of things and places to write from the current Genvara 1st of the Nativity of Christ, 1700. And as a sign of that good undertaking and a new century in the reigning city of Moscow, after due thanksgiving to God and prayer service in the church and to whom it will happen in your home, along the large and passing noble streets to noble people and at the houses of deliberate spiritual and worldly rank before make some decorations on the gates from trees and branches of pine, spruce and juniper against samples, which are made at Gostiny Dvor and at the lower pharmacy, or to whom it is more convenient and decent, depending on the place and the gate, it is possible to make; but for the meager people, each at least according to the wood, or vtv on the gate, or put over his temple; and then it would have ripened, now the future of Genvar to the 1st of this year, and to stand for that decoration of Genvar until the 7th day of that well, 1700. Yes, Genvara, on the 1st day, as a sign of fun, congratulating each other on the New Year and the centenary, commit cie: when fiery fun is lit and shooting will be on the big Red Square, then through the noble courts of the Boyars and Okolnichi and Dumny and the Middle and noble people of the ward , military and merchant rank to famous people, each in his own yard from small cannons, if anyone has one, and from several muskets or other small guns, fire three times and fire several rockets, as many as they happen, and along large streets, where there is space , From the 1st to the 7th of January, at night, light fires from firewood or brushwood or straw, and where there are small yards, five or six yards gathered, put such a fire or, whoever wants, put one or 2 or 3 resin on the columns and thin barrels, and filling with straw or brushwood, light; and in front of the Burmeister Town Hall there will be shooting and such lights and decorations at their discretion.

In 1699, in connection with the reform of Peter I, “then the first calendar was printed in Moscow according to that calculation (from January) and along the Russian horizon (Moscow time. - L. Kh.), indicating solar eclipses, monthly birth, full month with quarters, also the time of solar ascent and setting, long and long-lived for every day and with other astronomical supervision, and instead of counting the hours from morning to evening, His Majesty ordered to build clock bell towers in different places, on which were hours against Dutch from 1 hour to 12 hours.

Later, on the orders of Peter I in Amsterdam, Ivan Tessing created “saints or a calendar containing the perfect pronouncement of days and solar and lunar eclipses. According to the true calculus with the construction of the pole, to the Moscow region coordinating.

In Russia, the mass production of annual civil calendars dates back to the beginning of the 18th century. With the direct participation of Peter I, the first of them was published: “The Christian calendar or calendar according to the old calculus for the summer of 1709. From the world being 7217. Printed in the reigning city of Moscow in the summer of 1708. December 28 day.” Such calendars were published in the form of little books, and in addition to the months and days of the week, they contained some information on astronomy, the seasons, and recommendations for maintaining health; subsequent editions provided weather forecasts for the whole year and other information.

Particularly popular at one time was the wall “Universal or Christian Monthly Calendar”, published in 1709, engraved on six copper sheets, compiled by the typographer-librarian Vasily Kupriyanov (year of birth unknown, died in 1723, according to other sources - in 1728 .) "under the supervision of His Excellency General Lieutenant Yakov Vilimovich Bruce." This calendar was known as the "Bryusov Calendar", although even it itself indicated that "it was collected and published by the diligence of the librarian Vasily Kipriyanov." In this calendar, in addition to astrological predictions based on the positions of the planets, data on the time of sunrise and sunset in Moscow were placed, and other various information was given. This calendar, beloved by readers, has been repeatedly reprinted.

Gradually, its content was expanded and improved, and mainly due to astronomical information (about the length of the day and night, about lunar and solar eclipses, etc.). The Bryusov calendar served in Russia as a model for further calendars.

The first sheet of the Bryusov calendar of 1709 contained mainly astronomical information, the second sheet - a list of holidays and various church information. The third sheet included astrological information - "foreshadowing of time for every day on the planets", and the fourth - "foreshadowing of actions for every day along the course of the moon and zodiac." On the fifth sheet, the signs of the zodiac and allegorical images of the planets and seasons surrounded the portrait of Peter I, and on the sixth sheet were placed the rules for using the tables placed on all sheets.

The systematic release of printed wall calendars began in Russia in 1713. They contained, like previous calendars, predictions of weather, crops, diseases according to the position of the heavenly bodies, but they also contained the phrase that “war and peace, in fact, from star reading foretell an impossible thing.”

After 1728, the exclusive right to publish calendars passed to the Russian Academy, and at first they came out under the name "Calendar or calendar for the summer from the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ 1728, indicating solar eclipses, monthly births and full months and quarters." In the calendar for 1735, its compilers wrote that “The writers of calendars have an important similarity with historians. They must say in advance what will be done, and historians are obliged to repeat the same thing that has already passed.

In subsequent years, the Russian Academy published "ordinary, historical and geographical chronology with instructions." They contained the latest achievements of astronomy, history, geography, meteorology and other sciences and often unfounded divinations, in which "in our time (1785 - L. X.) no reasonable person believes."

Since 1865 calendars have been published by private organizations. So, for example, in 1908, the Bolshevik publishing house Zerno published a desktop calendar for everyone for 1908, for which V.I. Lenin wrote an article in 1907 called The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart. A portrait of K. Marx and his biography were also placed here. The calendar was banned by the tsarist censorship and confiscated. One such calendar from the illegally distributed part of the circulation ended up in the city of Shuya and was kept in the family of the worker K. Boloshov. It was recently transferred to the M. V. Frunze Museum of this city.

In 1780, on the initiative and with the assistance of the famous educator N. I. Novikov (1744–1818), the “Economic Calendar or Instruction to City and Village Residents” was published, composed by ... S. V. Druzhkovtsov”, in which advice is given for each month of the year.

The appearance of tear-off calendars dates back to the end of the 19th century. and was started by book publisher I. D. Sytin (1851–1934); N. A. Polushin, a connoisseur of folk life, was invited to compile them on the advice of L. N. Tolstoy (1828–1910). Such calendars have received great recognition and wide distribution among the people. Later, I. D. Sytin published specialized calendars - teachers', historical, hunting, office, ladies', children's, military and others.

The development of international relations in Russia already at the beginning of the 19th century. experienced great inconvenience, since the country used the Julian calendar, and most European states already at the end of the 17th century. lived according to the Gregorian calendar. The introduction of this calendar in Russia was prevented by the “Holy Synod”,

In 1830, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences made a proposal to introduce the Gregorian calendar in Russia, but it did not receive support. K. P. Lieven, who was Minister of Education at that time, wrote on this occasion to Tsar Nicholas I: “the benefits of changing the calendar are very unimportant, almost negligible, and the inconveniences and difficulties are inevitable and great.” On this report, the tsar inscribed: "The remarks of Prince Lieven are absolutely fair."

In 1899, under the Russian Astronomical Society (the society was founded in 1891), the Commission for the Reform of the Calendar was established. It consisted of representatives of many scientific institutions, ministries and departments of the country; the leading role in it belonged to the great Russian scientist D. I. Mendeleev (1834–1907). In connection with the reform of the calendar, the Commission had to answer two questions: 1) how to correct the accumulated error in the calculation of time and 2) what changes should be made to the existing calendar in order to avoid its accumulation in the future.

After long discussions of different versions of the calendar systems, at the suggestion of D. I. Mendeleev, the commission recommended, instead of the Gregorian, a more accurate calendar developed by the German astronomer, professor at Dorpat (Derpt - now Tartu) University I. G. Medler (1794–1874). Higher accuracy was achieved by the fact that in a period of 128 years, not 32 leap years were provided, as in the Julian calendar, but only 31. Thus, the average duration of the calendar year was

365 + (31/128) = 365.24219 days,

i.e., it was less than the length of the solar year by only 0.00001 days, which could lead to an error in such a calendar of one day in ... 100,000 years, and until 2028 such a calendar would not differ from the Gregorian one. And only starting from this year (a leap year in the Gregorian calendar and a simple one in the Medler calendar) would a difference of one day appear, and in 2156 a difference of one day would again form, etc. Soviet astronomer N. I. Idelson (1885 –1951) proposed to divide the period of 128 years into four: 33, 33, 29 and 33 years, and to provide for 8, 8, 7 and 8 leap years in each, respectively. In this case, the arithmetically most accurate solar calendar would be obtained. However, the draft calendar proposed by the Commission of the Russian Astronomical Society was not accepted by the tsarist government; The chief prosecutor of the synod, Pobedonostsev, said: "To consider the introduction of a new style untimely."

And only after the Great October Socialist Revolution, the issue of calendar reform in our country was resolved. On January 24, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR adopted the Decree on the Introduction of the Western European Calendar in the Russian Republic, which entered into force on February 1, 1918, according to the old style. The decree stated:

“In order to establish in Russia the same with almost all cultural peoples The Council of People's Commissars decides to introduce a new calendar into civil use after the end of January of this year. Because of this:

In this regard, February 1918 in Russia was the shortest month - it consisted of only 15 days, since after January 31, February 14 immediately followed - thirteen days were shortened to eliminate the difference between the old and new styles.

After the replacement of the Julian calendar in the Soviet Union, the desk calendar of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR was the first to be published. Subsequently, desktop, pocket and wall calendars were systematically published.

The first tear-off calendar for 1919 was published by the Publishing House of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. On the front side of his sheets there is a “diary of the revolution of 1917-1918”, and on their backs there are excerpts from decrees and government resolutions, materials of party congresses and biographies of revolutionaries, data on the national economy, on historical events, and on sheets 23 and On April 24, one of the first biographies of V.I. Lenin was published.

In our country in the period from 1929 to 1940. calendar reforms were repeatedly carried out, proceeding from purely production interests, and they concerned only its internal structure. Thus, at the end of 1929, a unified production calendar was introduced by a resolution of a special government commission under the Council of Labor and Defense. In it, the year was defined as consisting of 72 five-day weeks and 5 holidays dedicated to memorable days and revolutionary holidays (January 22, May 1 and 2, and November 7 and 8). Such a calendar provided for the continuous work of all enterprises and institutions of the country. At the same time, workers at all enterprises were divided into five groups; each group had its day off during each five-day period. In such a table-calendar, which consisted of five days, non-working days fell on different dates of the month and on different days of the seven-day week, and therefore the need for the latter disappeared.

Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (November 21, 1931) "On the interrupted production week in institutions", which entered into force on December 1, 1931, people's commissariats (now these are ministries) and relevant institutions were allowed to switch to a six-day week - a six-day interrupted production week. With such a reform of the calendar, constant non-working days were preserved in each month - the 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th and 30th numbers, and only in February the non-working day fell either on the last day of this month, or on 1 Martha. In the same months, which according to the Gregorian calendar consisted of 31 days, the last day was considered a super-monthly working day. Such a calendar system was used in the USSR until June 26, 1940, when the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree "On the transition to an eight-hour working day, to a seven-day working week and on the prohibition of unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises and institutions."

In accordance with this decree, a six-day week was canceled, a seven-day week was restored, and by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of June 27, 1940, it was established: "over Sundays non-working days are also: January 22, May 1 and 2, November 7 and 8, December 5.

§ 21. Projects of the new calendar

The Gregorian calendar is notable for its relatively high accuracy, but it also has a number of disadvantages. So, the duration of calendar months is different (28, sometimes 29, 30 and 31 days); months of different lengths alternate randomly; the beginning of the year is not associated with any natural phenomena; quarters (quarters of the year) have a duration of 90 to 92 days; the first half of the year is always shorter than the second (by three days in a simple year and two days in a leap year); the days of the week do not coincide with any fixed dates; 10–11 weeks are “split” - some of them belong to one month, some to another; Months start on different days of the week. The number of working days in different months of the same year is different (from 23 to 27 for a six-day week and from 19 to 23 for a five-day week) and their number is not the same in a year (307–311) and there is a need to transfer holidays. All this introduces complications into the work of planning and financial bodies, makes it difficult to draw up the results of work for various months, complicates the calculation of wages, etc. In addition, a huge number of calendars have to be published. Tens of millions of copies are published annually in our country alone.

As already noted, the first bold attempt to reform the calendar was the creation of the calendar of the French Revolution (p. 75). The following attempts to reform the Gregorian calendar, aimed at eliminating the shortcomings in it, date back to the first half of the 19th century. In 1834, the Italian abbot Marco Mastrophini proposed not to designate the 365th day of the year by a number, that is, to exclude it from the days of the week, and then each year would consist of 52 seven-day weeks. In the 80s of the last century, Gustave Armelin (France) proposed a draft of the World Calendar, in which the first month of each of the four quarters would have 31 days, and the other two would have 30 days, and the 365th day of the year would remain without a day designation weeks. This calendar project was once awarded the 1st prize by the French Astronomical Society.

With the expansion of cultural and economic ties between various states, the shortcomings of the Gregorian calendar became more tangible; It is not surprising, therefore, that in many countries of the world, starting from the first years of the 20th century. the question of improving the internal structure of the calendar was repeatedly raised, which would make it possible to create a calendar for all times and peoples - the World Unchanging Calendar.

In 1923, in Geneva, the League of Nations established the International Committee for the preparation of the World Unchanging Calendar. During its existence, the Committee has considered and made public several hundred draft calendars received from different countries peace.

In 1931, an international meeting on the calendar problem was held by the newly created World Calendar Association. This Association began to publish a special journal - "Journal of Calendar reforme", which covered issues related to the calendar reform.

The Calendar Reform Committee, having considered the draft calendars received, submitted two drafts for discussion in 1937 - a French 12-month and a Swiss 13-month calendar. In the Swiss project, the year consists of 13 months of 28 days and four weeks each, and one day at the end of the year and another day in the middle of a leap year remain without a date, outside the months and days of the week. A significant drawback of such a calendar is the inequality (or rather, the absence) of quarters in a year. The Swiss project did not receive a single vote during the voting and was rejected. The resistance of the Vatican and the outbreak of the Second World War generally prevented the calendar reform from being carried out.

The draft French 12-month calendar was approved in principle by the governments of 70 countries, and even earlier, in 1922, the draft of such a calendar was approved by the International Astronomical Union.

Subsequently, the issue of calendar reform was discussed in the commissions and councils of the UN. Thus, the UN Economic and Social Council again discussed a 13-month calendar, all months of which would begin on Sunday and end on Saturday, with the same rules for inserting additional days. These days were proposed to be announced international holidays. The day at the end of the year can be called the Day of Peace and Friendship of Peoples. The second additional day - in the middle of the year - was proposed to be called the Day of a leap year.

Opponents of the thirteen-month calendar pointed out that the presence of a thirteenth month would lead to confusion in the calculation of various historical dates. Therefore, they put forward projects of other calendars in which the year consisted of 12 months, and it should be based on a tropical year in which the change of seasons is associated with the relative position of the Earth and the Sun. In 1949, the issue of calendar reform was considered by the UN and again was not resolved.

In 1953, the issue of calendar reform was again raised at the UN at the initiative of the Indian delegation, which proposed “... to approve for the whole world a new, uniform and unchanging calendar, astronomically adjusted relative to the movement of the Earth around the Sun and more correct, scientifically based and profitable than the Gregorian calendar".

In 1954, the draft of the new calendar was approved by the 18th session of the UN Economic and Social Council and recommended for consideration at the UN General Assembly. It preserves the tropical year, which is divided into four quarters of 91 days each. Such a calendar is simple in its arithmetic basis. In it, each quarter consists of three months, with the first month of the quarter containing 31, and the remaining two months containing 30 days each. The internal structure of such a calendar, compared to the Gregorian, undergoes minor changes: February is increased by two days - the 29th and 30th, March, May and August are reduced by one day each, April gets one extra day. The day after December 30 was proposed to be called the Day of Peace and Friendship of Peoples. The first day of each year always falls on a Sunday, and each quarter containing exactly 13 weeks begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday. Each month has 26 business days.

Such a calendar also has the advantage that it brings simplicity to everyday life. In table. 8 shows the World Calendar with 12 months in a year. In it, various time intervals for work are constant, which will increase the efficiency of planning and help save time, material and labor costs. The number of days 364 is divided into 2, 4, 7, 13, 14, 26, 28, 52, 91 and 182, which facilitates operations with different units of time - days, weeks, months, quarters. The observance of national holidays is simplified, that is, it preserves the constancy of the days of the week. Due to the stability of the quarters, it provides great convenience for agriculture and facilitates the planning of the Olympics and other sports events, and two new world holidays will promote mutual understanding between people from different countries. On fig. 17, the emblem of the World Calendar is shown. Here, the numbers mean the number of days in the corresponding months, the Day of Peace and Friendship of Peoples is marked with the letters DM, and the day of a leap year is marked with the letters VD.

The adoption of the 12-month calendar, approved by the USSR, India, China, France, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and many states of Europe, Asia and Latin America, will not cause any radical break in our chronology, so it can quickly enter the life of all peoples and easily replace today the Gregorian calendar in force in most countries of the world. However, a new calendar can only be introduced after it has been approved by all countries, under a generally binding international agreement. It was precisely in the matter of achieving universal approval that great difficulties were revealed. They are explained by the influence of the church in the capitalist states, which in every possible way defends the preservation of the Gregorian calendar and opposes any kind of calendar reforms. This is exactly the situation in the USA, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Indonesia and in some other countries, whose governments, during its discussion, refused to accept the draft of the new calendar, motivating their decision with religious considerations.

Rice. 17. Emblem of the World Calendar

The expansion of cultural, technical and commercial ties between peoples facilitates the reform of the calendar, which is of international importance and can, of course, be solved only on an international scale. The adoption of the "World Calendar" project, which should be ubiquitous, will promote mutual communication between peoples and satisfy the progressive scientific, economic and cultural ties of people all over the globe.

Notes:

Marx K., Engels F. Op. - 2nd ed. - T. 23. - S. 522; subscript note five.

Engels F. dialectics of nature. - M.: 1975. - S. 163.

Lenin V.I. Full coll. op. -T. 18. - S. 181.

In 1986 the Bulgarian archaeologist St. During excavations near the town of Kyustendil, Khadzhiev discovered a 7,000-year-old pottery item with lines and signs drawn on it, which, by his definition, is a calendar in which the year was divided into 12 months and consisted of 360 days. Bulgarian Knychev collected a collection containing more than 2000 samples of various calendars published in countries of all continents.

The ancestor of modern wall, table and pocket calendars is a calendar published in Czechoslovakia in 1485. Already at that time, calendars allowed not only keeping track of time, but also contained advice to peasants and townspeople to prepare for the various seasons of the year.

Now the average duration of the lunar month is taken equal to 29.530588 mean solar days, or 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 2.3 seconds of mean solar time. It is established by measuring the time interval between two distant solar eclipses.

More precisely, not with the new moon, but with the first appearance of the sickle of the new month - neomenia.

According to the Bible, during each seven-day week, you can work only six days, and on the seventh day, Saturday, dedicated to God, you should rest. Later, the day of rest was transferred to the next day, which in the Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200bwas called the "week" - the day on which they "do not do", that is, they do not work. The name "Sunday" in Russian became widely used only in the 16th century.

Februa is a goatskin belt used to hit each other on the feast of Luperic, the patron saint of shepherds.

The duration of the tropical (solar) year was fairly accurately established from astronomical observations in ancient China, India, Egypt, and Babylonia. Later, these definitions were refined, gradually approaching the duration now accepted for him.

By the way, at the Council of Nicaea, it was customary to celebrate Christian Easter on the first Sunday after the first spring full moon, coming after March 21st.

Various sources, Soviet and foreign, indicate different periods of error accumulation in one day: from 3270 to 3333 years. According to the calculations of I. Ya. P.K. Sternberg, if we accept the annual change in the length of the tropical year, attributed by S. Newcomb to 1900, then the error of one day accumulates over 2735 years and the correction must be introduced in 1582 + 2735 = 4317.

The idea of ​​a calendar was proposed in 1787 by Sylvain Maréchal (1750–1803), and the project was developed in 1793 by the poet Fabre D'Eglantin (1755–1794).

The representative assembly is the highest legislative institution during the period of the French bourgeois revolution, which existed from 09/20/1792 to 10/26/1795.

The account of years from "Christ's birth" is offered in 525 AD. e., or 241 of the era of Diocletian (from the year of his accession to the Roman throne), by the monk Dionysius the Small. Dionysius the Lesser considered it "decent" to replace the era of the pagan and opponent of Christianity Diocletian with another era, somehow connected with Christianity, and calculated that "Christmas" occurred 525 years ago, i.e. 284 years before the era of Diocletian (284 + 241 = 525), or in 728 from the founding of Rome.

It lasted more than 13 years and from January 1, 1805 was replaced by the Gregorian. After 65 years, the Paris Commune in March 1871 restored the republican calendar, but this time it was used for only a few months and, with the fall of the Paris Commune, was abolished from May 28, 1871.

It would seem that the concept of a month is familiar to everyone, but not many people are able to answer the question of what a month is. Consider the concept of a month as a unit of time.

What is called the month

A month refers to a full revolution of the moon around the Earth. It is believed that this unit of measurement originated many thousands of years ago, long before the birth of Jesus Christ. There are several types of months in astronomy.

• The first month is synodic. It represents the time interval between the same phases of the moon, is approximately 29.5 days.
• The so-called stellar month is also the period of time, which includes a full revolution of the moon around the earth during the apparent movement of the moon on the celestial sphere. The sidereal month is 27 days long.
• In a tropical month, the period of revolution of the Moon around the Earth is measured in longitude. Due to the peculiarity of the earth's axis, the tropical month is shorter than the sidereal month. This feature is called the precession of the earth's axis. The tropical month is also approximately 27 days long.

What is a calendar month

A calendar month is understood as the period of time from the first day to the last day of a particular month. Note that the calendar month is often not related to astronomical months, but its origin is directly related to astronomical observations. In particular, the modern calendar months originated from lunar and solar-lunar calendars, which are actively used in Hinduism, Chinese calendars, Muslims and Jews. In these calendars, the number of days in a month ranges from 29 to 30.

Calendar history

However, the ancestor of the calendar months is traditionally considered to be Julius Caesar. Before him, the ancient Romans also used their calendar, but initially there were not 12 months in it, but 10. The names of the months were numerals. Then the names of the months were changed to the names of the gods, for example, January was named after the two-faced god Janus, February - in honor of the god underworld Februs.

In many ways, the ancient Roman calendar was determined by superstition. Initially, it consisted of 304 days, but the Romans sought to fit it into the ancient Greek calendar, which consisted of 354 days. However, even numbers were considered unlucky by the Romans, so one more day had to be added to the calendar, thus the calendar became 12 months long. However, it was extremely inconvenient in handling, it was difficult to predict weather phenomena, and, consequently, the preparation for the harvest.

How was the Julian calendar invented?

In this regard, the Roman statesman Julius Caesar attempted to reform the calendar. Having visited Egypt, he considered that the Egyptian calendar was much better than the Roman one. After his visit to Egypt, he commissioned astronomers to modify the Roman calendar. The process of creating the Julian calendar was led by the astronomer Sosigen, but the Roman Senate, first of all, thanked Julius Caesar for creating the new calendar. The month of July was even named after him.

Calendar Improvement

Note that the Julian calendar has been improved long time. Initially, there were no numbers in this calendar, the days were distributed according to nones, calends and eve. Obviously, such a system of calculating months was very difficult to understand. It generated a lot of controversy, especially in military affairs. For example, to say the date of July 15, they said “17th day from the July kalends”, May 9th was called “7th day from the May ides”. Of course, this confused many, and even chroniclers sometimes could not explain the meaning of concepts. And in military affairs, it was important to act quickly and be able to plan tactics as well as possible. Therefore, the preservation of such a system was out of the question. And since Julius Caesar was a commander highly respected by the Senate, he was able to carry out other reforms of the calendar, which successfully took root among both the civilian population and the military.

Thus, the Julian calendar has undergone major changes, but its general features have been preserved, and to this day many countries use it. It should be noted that the Julian calendar is not accurate. It lags behind the tropical year by 11 minutes 14 seconds, in terms of chronology, this is 128 years for one day. However, its main advantage over other calendars is its ease of use.

If you do not understand why there are 12 months in a year, we recommend that you read the article.