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Calendar Reform and Metric Time proposals by Gavin Gregor Young

Calendar Reform Proposals

I equally prefer Proposal 1 of the CalendarReform.org website and the International Fixed Calendar (also known as the Cotsworth Calendar, Eastman Calendar, International Perpetual Calendar, and Equal Months Calendar) because these 13 month calendars result in the best symmetry and order. The 13 Moon Calendar is less desirable to me because it uses a 13 day "week" every 52 years in place of leap year days. That results in the calendar getting out of sync with the seasons by up to many days. Further that calendar has too many "New Age" spirituality elements in it that make me uneasy about using it. I prefer that an international calendar not promote one form of spirituality over another since people have many different beliefs regarding spirituality. Having spirituality elements in a calendar makes it a religious calendar instead of a purely secular/civil one. Having such a calendar become part of international law, which some of the creators of the 13 Moon Calendar have attempted to do via the United Nations organization, is inappropriate (unless the version submitted to the UN did not include the "New Age" elements). However I am not against individuals choosing to personally use such a calendar because everyone is free to choose their spiritual practices (or lack thereof).

I believe that having quarters of 13 weeks (three 28 day months plus one week) is no problem, though a little more work may be involved if one tries to divide the quarters into months. However I feel that the above mentioned calendars, and any others that use blank days (or any day not part of the 7 day week), will not be adopted any time soon as national calendars due to opposition by certain religious groups. Likewise some of those same groups will oppose Monday appearing as the first day of the week. I therefore submited an alternate proposal which I felt had a much more higher likelihood of becoming widespread in the short term. Since then, I've conducted more research on attempts to reform the calendar and I noticed that a very similar calendar has been proposed before. Those proposals were quickly dimissed prior to 1940 in favor of further consideration of the International Fixed Calendar and the World Calendar. I therefore have no further hope for adoption of my modification to the World Calendar, tentatively calling that calendar the "Reform Calendar". I thus decided to promote the International Fixed Calendar with some minor revisions of my own. I intend to revive support for the International Fixed Calendar, by urging individuals to make personal use of it of whether or not it is ever officially adopted as a national or international civil calendar. My revisions of the calendar make it easier to use it in a world that still uses the Gregorian Calendar.

Revival of International Fixed Calendar, with Enhancements (originally proposed by Gavin Gregor Young on 2003/12/24 according to the Gregorian Calendar)

Click to subscribe to Calendar-Reform group that is Promoting the Enhanced version of the International Fixed Calendar

My version of the International Fixed Calendar has the following characteristics:

• There are 13 months in every year.
• Every month has exactly 4 weeks of 7 days each, for a total of 28 days in each month.
• The names of 12 of the months are no longer the same as the names in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Thus none of the months are any longer named after pagan gods and goddesses, nor emperors. The name of the new month (used in the other International Fixed Calendars) is no longer called Sol. Instead all the names of the months have numerical meanings. They are tentatively named as follows: First-month, Second-month, Third-month, Fourth-month, Fifth-month, Sixth-month, Seventh-month, Eighth-month, Ninth-month, Tenth-month, Eleventh-month, Twelvth-month, and Thirteenth-month. Other possible names are Onemonth, Twomonth, Threemonth, Fourmonth, Fivemonth, Sixmonth, and Sevenmonth.
• The names of the 7 days of the week are no longer the same as the names in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Thus none of the days of the week are any longer named after pagan gods and goddesses, nor celestial bodies. Instead all the names of the days of the week have numerical meanings. They are tentatively named as follows: First-day, Second-day, Third-day, Fourth-day, Fifth-day, Sixth-day, and Seventh-day. Other possible names are Oneday, Twoday (except that this word sounds to similar to the word today), Threeday, Fourday, Fiveday, Sixday, and Sevenday.
• Every year has a day named Year Day (or perhaps Year-day). Though that day is a part of the year, it not one of the days of the seven day week, nor is it a part of any month. It is suggested that the day be treated as a holiday/vacation day and thus not a part of any quarter-year nor half-year for financial statement purposes, unless individuals and/or organizations wish to personally interpret it as such. However that day has a non-numerical date. That date is YD. If an ISO equivalent date format were used to represent that date for the year 2004, the representation would be 2004/--/YD. The "--" indicates that the date is not a part of any month. The Year Day is tentatively the last day of the year, as in most proposals of the International Fixed Calendar, however this might eventually be changed to a different day of the year. For example, it might later be decided for it be the first day of the year and thus coincide with New Year's Day. Since the day is a part of the year and has a date, the day will not be referred to as a "blank day" nor will it be referred to as an extended Sixth-day, Seventh-day, nor First-day on civil calendars, though religious groups are free to designate/interpret it an extra Sabbath day on their religious calendars if they wish. Though the Year Day may not be referred to as a "blank day", it may be referred to a supplemental day or an anniversay day since the day does occur once in every year. Since the Year Day occurs each year, it should not be referred to as an intercalary day.
• The calendar follows the Gregorian Calendar rule for determining which years are leap years (except perhaps as noted later in this paragraph). The extra day in leap years will be called Leap Day (or Leap-day). Though that day is a part of the year, it not one of the days of the seven day week, nor is it a part of any month. It is suggested that the day be treated as a holiday/vacation day and thus not a part of any quarter-year nor half-year for financial statement purposes, unless individuals and/or organizations wish to personally interpret it as such. However that day has a non-numerical date. That date is LD. If an ISO equivalent date format were used to represent that date for the year 2004, the representation would be 2004/--/LD. The "--" indicates that the date is not a part of any month. The Leap Day is tentatively in between the last day of the sixth month and the first day of the seventh month, as in most proposals of the International Fixed Calendar, however this might eventually be changed to a different day of the year. For example, it might later be decided for it be at the end of the 26th week and thus occur at the half-year point. Or perhaps it may become the last day of the year (perhaps in the year preceding a Gregorian leap year, but most likely in the same year as a Gregorian leap year). Since the Leap Day is a part of the year and has a date, the day will not be referred to as a "blank day" nor will it be referred to as an extended Sixth-day, Seventh-day, nor First-day on civil calendars, though religious groups are free to designate/interpret it an extra Sabbath day on their religious calendars if they wish. Though the day may not be referred to as a "blank day", the day may be referred to as an intercalary day, since it is such due to its insertion into the calendar in leap years.
• The first day of the year occurs on the same day as the first day of the Gregorian Calendar (unless the Leap Day is chosen to occur in the year preceding a Gregorian leap year). The last day of the year occurs on the same day as the last day of the Gregorian Calendar.
• Since the Year Day and Leap Day are not considered a part of the financial quarters and half years, each financial quarter-year is of exactly the same length.
• To aid comparisons between the months and financial quarters, the Calendars printed by Gavin Young and/or Renewable Electricity Solutions have each week and quarter labeled with its number (space permitting). Likewise the day and time of day for the start of the seasons (as defined by their equinoxes and soltices) are labeled on the calendar (space permitting). Further the Gregorian date and Roman/"Gregorian" day of the week are superimposed onto the calendar (space permitting), to facilitate use of the calendar in a world that currently predominately uses the Gregorian calendar. One could say that these calendars calendars are thus three calendars in one, namely a modified ISO Week calendar, a perpetual 13 month calendar of equal months and equal length quarters, and a Gregorian calendar!
• Printed copies of this enhanced International Fixed Calendar are available from Gavin Young and/or Renewable Electricity Solutions, upon request. Look for the enhanced International Fixed Calendar at Renewable Electricity Solutions - Other Products webpage. The initial copies are simple and at only nominal cost (merely to cover printing costs). Individuals and/or organizations who wish to print copies of this enhanced calendar for resale or distribution must first request permission from Gavin Young and/or Renewable Electricity Solutions, so that the integrity of the calendar will be maintained. Most likely no fee will be charged by Gavin Young and/or Renewable Electricity Solutions for the right to print copies of the enhanced International Fixed Calendar, though Gavin Young retains the copyright for this enhanced calendar.

Solution to Problem of Using Quarter Years in a 13 Months/Year Calendar

The 13 months of this calendar can be harmonized with quarterly financial statements.

Proponents of the World Calendar often say that a major difficulty in using the 13 month calendar is in dividing the year into quarters, because the number 13 is a prime numeber. It is true that the prime number nature of the number 13 does make it difficult to divide the year into even whole number months. But the same could be said about the 7 day week, since the number is also a prime number (as are the numbers 2, 3, 5, and 11). People can't divide the week into an even number of days. For example if they try to divide it into halves, they could say that the first 3 days is the first "half" and the last 4 four are the latter "half", but those are not true halves. They could divide the week into exactly 3.5 days, but this is not practical for scheduling. For example meetings could be scheduled for noon on the fourth day and midnight of the seventh day (techinically 0:00 of the first day according to the ISO standard), and thus the week would be divided exactly into halves but this is not pratical (who wants to have a business meeting take place at midnight?). This issue comes into play whenever people to try to schedule an activity twice a week or three times a week.

Likewise even though the World Calendar (and similar calendars) divide the year into four equal length quarters, the quarters are not divided into equal length months. That is because one month of every three is one day longer than the others. This one day difference may seem minor, but it still hinders statistical comparisons between the months.

While 13 months can not be divided into equal length quarter years consisting of whole months, the 13 months can be divided into quarter years consisting of whole weeks. The year can also be divided into quarters of exactly 3.25 months. In both the 13 month calendar and the World Calendar, a quarter still equals exactly 13 weeks or 91 days. In the 13 month calendar, a quarter would also equal exactly 3.25 months or exactly 3 months plus one week.

My view is that someone can choose to divide the year into exactly 13 months of four weeks, or 4 quarters of exactly 13 weeks. If they want to view matters both ways they can use both a monthly calendar of 13 months and a weekly calendar of 52 weeks. My rendition of the 13 month calendar has both of these concepts united. Every month is numbered, every quarter is numbered, every week is numbered, and the starting date and time (including the reference time zone) of every season is indicated.

Many businesses, including Intel Coporation, are already viewing the year as being a series of weeks, according to the ISO week standard. In the ISO week standard the year is sometimes 52 weeks and sometimes 53 weeks (because of the 365th day and leap day), but my calendar uses exactly 52 weeks (because the 365th day and the leap days are considered outside the week, month, and financial quarter). This modified ISO week standard fits in better with a 13 month year than it does with a 12 month year. It also fits in perfectly with a quarterly year.

With a 13 month calendar, there is the issue of reconciling monthly financial reports with financial quarterly reports. But in the age of affordable electronic personal computers and handheld electronic calculators, this is not nearly as difficult as it was in the 1920's through the 1950's. The months can be divided by 4 to obtain the weekly average and the quarters can be divided by 13 to obtain the weekly average. By comparing the weekly averages, the monthly and quarterly reports can be compared.

Likewise the monthly reports can be converted into an partially averaged quarterly report, by adding the data from three monthly reports to one-fourth of the data from the next monthly report. If exactness is desired (and perhaps required with quaretly filing to the SEC), the subsidiary ledgers can be closed at the end of each quater as well as the end of each month. Though this means more closings during the year, this does not necessarily mean more work for the accounting department. For example if a quarterly closing is made at the end of the first week in the fourth month, only three weeks of data needs to be closed by the closing at the end of the fourth month instead of four weeks of data.

As another alternative, perhaps the SEC and IRS would allow business to use a fiscal system where the first three quarters are exactly each 3 months long, but where the fourth quarter is exactly four months long. In this situation the quarters would not be exactly the same length, but there would only be 13 closings of the subsidiary ledgers. If such a manner of reporting is used, the financial statements should state to investors that the fiscal fourth quarter is 25% longer than the other fiscal quarters; and provide a monthly average for each quarter to make it easy for investors to compare the quarters.

These ideas are the solutions I have come up with to deal with the reconciling of 13 months to 4 business quarters in a 13 month year. Electronic calculators and computers make this very easy in our era. It should thus be easier to gain support for a 13 month calendar in our era, than it was back in the 1930's.

The advantages and disadvantages of the above enhanced version of the International Fixed Calendar will be provided at a later time.

12 Month Calendar Reform Proposal tentatively known as Reform Calendar

My other calendar proposal, tentatively known as Reform Calendar, is a derivation of the World Calendar and it also closely resembles the Perpetual Calendar and Aristean Calendar. This Calendar is the same as the World Calendar, except it has no blank days. It therefore maintains the 7 day week and would thus not meet religious opposition on the grounds of conflicts with observing a Sabbath every seven days where each Sabbath day is a Saturday (or Friday evening to Saturday evening).

For non-leap years, every quarter would have the same number or days, except the fourth quarter would have one extra day. However since most of the USA holidays (and perhaps the same for many other countries) are concentrated in the fourth quarter, having the fourth quarter be one day longer would help balance the number of work days in each quarter. In leap years, the number of days in the second quarter would equal the number of days in the fourth quarter. In leap years this would result in both halves of the year being equal.

The calendar could run Sunday through Saturday (as shown below) as in the World Calendar or Monday through Sunday as in the Perpetual Calendar and Aristean Calendar. The second month of the year would have 30 days instead of 28 or 29 days. The months and days of the week could be named the same as they are in the Gregorian calendar, however I strongly prefer names that are not the names of pagan gods or emperors. In fact I don't want them to be named after any person or deity. I don't even want the calendar to be named after me. I prefer names that are based upon the numbers of the weeks and the numbers of the months. By making the naming based upon numbers, it will be easy for people to learn the names. Likewise its names would not favor one religious group or culture above another. However since I have not yet decided upon the new names, the examples shown below have the familiar Gregorian month and weekday names, with the exception of the months of February through August including the word "New" in their respective names. The word new is added so that when someone obtain copies of the new calendar they won't confuse this calendar with the Gregorian calendar. I had planed to begin printing the Reform Calendar in late 2003 December and selling them from my Renewable Electricity Solutions - Other Products webpage and other places. However recent research of the history of calendar reform indicates that this calendar will have little appeal to calendar reformers, and my preference lies with a 13 month calendar anyway. I have thus decided to not print the Reform Calendar, except maybe as a one page calendar in the back of my enhanced version of the International Fixed Calendar. The enhanced version of the International Fixed Calendar is now the calendar I intend to print and distribute via my Renewable Electricity Solutions - Other Products webpage and other places.

The shortcoming of this calendar is that it is not perpetual/perennial (due to no blank days) and that all four quarters and all twelve months are not of exactly the same length.

The strong points of this calendar is that it would be: 1) much more strongly accepted by the general public, 2) all months would differ in length by no more than 1 day from each other, 3) all quarters and half-years will differ in length by no more than 1 day from each other, 3) the calendar will not receive opposition on the grounds of a seven day Sabbath cycle interruption, 4) September through February 28th are identical to the Gregorian calendar (as is the World Calendar) and thus people won't have to make many adjustments in adopting the new calendar and the other months differ by no more than two days from the Gregorian calendar, 5) because there are no blank days the calendar can be adopted at any time - no need to wait until a certain year. In fact because of no blank days, it will be much easier for people to adopt the new calendar for personal/business use while also interacting with those who use the Gregorian calendar. 6) It avoids a problem in connection with blank days, which I describe below.

Consider the situation in which it is 4 days before a blank day (such as in Proposal 1 and the World Calendar). If someone says "lets meet together 5 days from now", does that person mean on the day after the blank day or two days after the blank day (since the blank day is not considered part of a weekday). Not having blank days eliminates this type of problem.

A tentative name for this calendar is the Reform Calendar.

Metric Time Proposal

I also propose metric time, an idea I thought of back in the late 1979 when I was 14 years old though I have not publized it until 2003 Ocotober 18th according to Gregorian calendar. At least one other person (in the "What Dime Is it?" website) has the same idea as mine for the time division, but my naming of the time units uses the same convention of the metric prefixes. Apparently the The French Revolutionary Time used the same time units though perhaps with different names (see "The French Revolutionary calendar" and "French Revolutionary Time" websites). Further my metric time proposal would also revise the number of degrees from 360 to a number more compatible with he metric time units. I will elaborate on that matter at a later time.

The time units would be as follows:

1) Each day is divided into 10 decidays and thus one deciday = 2.4 hours

2) Each deciday is divided into 100 millidays and thus there are 1000 millidays in a day and thus one milliday = 1.44 minutes

3) Each milliday is divided into 100 centimillidays (a tentative name used for lack of a better term) and thus there are 100,000 centimillidays in a day and thus one centimiiliday = 0.864 seconds.

I know the metric time proposal will not likely get adopted since even the French abandonded the same idea, but it would still make time calculations much simpler. Maybe it would be adopted in scientific circles.

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