Abstract
BHOLA D. PANTH has produced a book with the above title, published by the Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1944 (pp. 138), which supplies an excellent account of the calendar, and also shows the great difficulties that beset the path of those who desire calendar reform. Details concerning the basic concepts of ancient calendars among the Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Mohammedans and others will prove helpful to many, more especially as such information is no longer supplied in every issue of the Nautical Almanac. Chapter 4 is devoted to a consideration of various proposals for calendar improvement. Reference to some of these proposals has been made in Nature (153, 229; 1944), and it is unnecessary to deal further with the different suggestions made to simplify our calendar. The Special Committee of Enquiry into the Reform of the Calendar of the League of Nations in 1926, in Geneva, received 185 plans from 33 different countries, and although this was evidence of keen interest in the subject, it also showed that a certain amount of opposition is inevitable whatever plan be adopted. It does not seem highly probable that the nations of the world are yet prepared to accept any particular scheme, though some reform on the lines indicated in this book would certainly simplify matters in many ways. At the end of the book there is a short table which enables the reader to determine the day of the week by the Julian Calendar, A.D. 1–2099, or by the Gregorian Calendar, A.D. 1582–2099.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Consider the Calendar. Nature 155, 693–694 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/155693d0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/155693d0