The Almost Inevitable Wrangling Over How The Imperial Calendar Should Look

[Terry Mixon]

I saw this on the interwebz and felt it was time to drop this here.

It needs Holiday to work, but it would be so much cleaner than twelve months. It could be called 13 maintenance periods.

 

[rinku]

The meme is incorrect about the moon, whose period is about 29.5 days, not 28 days. Changing to 13 28 day months has its points, but better aligning to the moon is NOT one of those.

However, who cares about the natural cycle of Luna when not living on Terra or Luna? Even Martians are going to say "eh."

So, yes. If you even want to bother with months at all, that is. It would make a deal of sense to define required maintenance in a 2 week cycle, or tie it to jumps made. I would certainly think a ship making two jumps in two weeks is going to need a lot more work done than one that was docked in port for that fortnight.

Edit:
It may be worth noting that before aligning with the Sumerian/Babylonian derived western calendar (whose 7 day week only derives from there being 7 bright objects in the sky that move, anyway), China used a 10 day week, 3 to a 30 day calendar month (early, middle and late weeks). Various strategies were used at various times to keep things lined up (they were very much aware of the 365.25 day length of the solar year and 29.5 day lunar month).

And for that matter... 24 hour days? How many planets have that? Madness!

The Third Imperium already had two major competing cultural calendars - Terran and Vilani - to deal with when it was set up. Honestly, it's a wonder they didn't just go with a decimal calendar and be done with it. Or maybe a duodecimal one... 20 hours to the day, 20 days to a month, 20 months to a year. 400 day years, but 333 old terran days in length. Or something.

100 seconds to a minute (1.66 old minutes)
100 minutes to an hour (2.77 old hours)
100 hours to a week (1.6 old weeks)
100 weeks to a year (3.17 old years)

It SEEMS weird, but it probably makes a lot of sense in the Far Future, and certainly makes for easier time calculations...

 

[Condottiere]

The Shire Calendar was used by the Hobbits of the Shire. It was different from that used by the Men, Dwarves and Elves. Use of this calendar in Middle-earth is referred to as Shire-reckoning.

The calendar featured 12 months, all 30 days long, plus 5 or 6 named days added to round out 365 days (or 366 for leap years). Two of the named days were Yuledays; one was the first day of the year and the other was the last day of the year. Between June and July were the Lithedays. In common years (not leap years) there were three: 1 Lithe, Mid-year's Day, and 2 Lithe. In leap years (every fourth year except in the last year of a century) an extra Overlithe Day was added after Mid-year's Day. All of the named days were major holidays (and a reason for feasting) with Overlithe being a day of special merrymaking.[1][2] The two Yuledays were actually a portion of Yuletide, which included the last three and first three days of each year.[2]

In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the names of months and days are given in modern equivalents. For instance, Afteryule is called January and Sterday is called Saturday.[2]

 

[FreeTrav]

Freelance Traveller - Kurishdam - Lecture Hall and Library - Calendars in Charted Space

 

[MongooseBella]

The Shire Calendar was used by the Hobbits of the Shire. It was different from that used by the Men, Dwarves and Elves. Use of this calendar in Middle-earth is referred to as Shire-reckoning.

The calendar featured 12 months, all 30 days long, plus 5 or 6 named days added to round out 365 days (or 366 for leap years). Two of the named days were Yuledays; one was the first day of the year and the other was the last day of the year. Between June and July were the Lithedays. In common years (not leap years) there were three: 1 Lithe, Mid-year's Day, and 2 Lithe. In leap years (every fourth year except in the last year of a century) an extra Overlithe Day was added after Mid-year's Day. All of the named days were major holidays (and a reason for feasting) with Overlithe being a day of special merrymaking.[1][2] The two Yuledays were actually a portion of Yuletide, which included the last three and first three days of each year.[2]

In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the names of months and days are given in modern equivalents. For instance, Afteryule is called January and Sterday is called Saturday.[2]

Is this like how Frodo's real name was Maura?

 

[Condottiere]

You need a professorial chair to keep track of the entire Tolkien lore.

Though, I do vaguely recall coming across a reference to that, somewhere.

A pop psychologist might say it's an oblique reference to Freud.

 

[FreeTrav]

A pop psychologist might say it's an oblique reference to Freud.

Psychoanalysis is Freudulent!

 

[rinku]

At least Middle earth is meant to be this planet, with the same solar and lunar cycles.

 

[WHULorigan]

In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the names of months and days are given in modern equivalents.

The Hobbit month names were actually based on the Anglo-Saxon calendar names, modified to how they might have come down to modern English had they remained in common usage.

 

[WHULorigan]

The meme is incorrect about the moon, whose period is about 29.5 days, not 28 days. Changing to 13 28 day months has its points, but better aligning to the moon is NOT one of those.

A Lunar Month is 29.5 days, but it's sideral period is 27.3 days - they may have gotten it from there.

And for that matter... 24 hour days? How many planets have that? Madness!

The human circadian rhythm is still based around 24 hours (actually a little less - and the Vilani are 32hour), so that is a value not likely to change for local time, even if it gets out of sync with the local "day".

The Third Imperium already had two major competing cultural calendars - Terran and Vilani - to deal with when it was set up. Honestly, it's a wonder they didn't just go with a decimal calendar and be done with it. Or maybe a duodecimal one... 20 hours to the day, 20 days to a month, 20 months to a year. 400 day years, but 333 old terran days in length. Or something.

100 seconds to a minute (1.66 old minutes)
100 minutes to an hour (2.77 old hours)
100 hours to a week (1.6 old weeks)
100 weeks to a year (3.17 old years)

Metric Time Clock

Metric Time Clock

metric-time.com

 

[FreeTrav]

Metric Time Clock

Metric Time Clock

metric-time.com

Swatch tried a close variation of this. It didn't catch on.

Swatch Internet Time - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[CordwainerFish]

The human circadian rhythm is still based around 24 hours (actually a little less

Was going to say "actually closer to 25 hours" but that turns out not to be the case.

(Though when I was younger I think I would have had no problems living a 25 hour day.)

 

[JupiterIndustries]

I think the Solomani have it right with the calendar tbh...

 

[WHULorigan]

Seems to me that individual worlds would keep "local" calendars and timekeeping systems as best fits the local world (or something independent that works for bizarre situations), but that the "Interstellar Community" (i.e. Imperial Standard, ship crews, etc) would utilize something like the Metric Calendar above (which is actually not much different than what the Star Trek "Star Date" is based on), that simply measures out time linearly and incrementally. A "Day" or "Date" is one unit, and is decimalized as it increments (= metric hours, minutes, etc). You just need to agree on a reasonable length for the "Day", and a "Zero" date for the date/time origin (Such as Year 000.0 - The Founding of the Third Imperium). Then just convert to the Capital/Sylean (or other) Calendar as needed - so many increments equal so many years, months (of 30 or 28 days), weeks (nominally 7 days), etc.

1 day = 1 whole-number increment of the "Date" numerical string. When the numbers eventually get too large, you can truncate the string at certain per-defined intervals for routine practical use.

Day Length:
The average of Solomani/Sylean and Vilani diurnal length is 28 Terran Standard Hours, based on an Imperial Standard Second.

(And define an Imperial Standard Meter such that during an Imperial Standard Second light will travel exactly 1/300,000 of an Imperial Standard Kilometer, of which there are exactly 150,000,000 in an Imperial Standard AU, which will equal exactly 500 ls). ​

 

[FreeTrav]

Seems to me that individual worlds would keep "local" calendars and timekeeping systems as best fits the local world (or something independent that works for bizarre situations), but that the "Interstellar Community" (i.e. Imperial Standard, ship crews, etc) would utilize something like the Metric Calendar above (which is actually not much different than what the Star Trek "Star Date" is based on), that simply measures out time linearly and incrementally. A "Day" or "Date" is one unit, and is decimalized as it increments (= metric hours, minutes, etc). You just need to agree on a reasonable length for the "Day", and a "Zero" date for the date/time origin (Such as Year 000.0 - The Founding of the Third Imperium). Then just convert to the Capital/Sylean (or other) Calendar as needed - so many increments equal so many years, months (of 30 or 28 days), weeks (nominally 7), etc.

1 day = 1 whole-number increment of the "Date" numerical string. When the numbers eventually get too large, you can truncate the string at certain per-defined intervals for routine practical use.

Day Length:
The average of Solomani/Sylean and Vilani diurnal length is 28 Terran Standard Hours, based on an Imperial Standard Second.

(And define an Imperial Standard Meter such that during an Imperial Standard Second light will travel exactly 1/300,000 of an Imperial Standard Kilometer, of which there are exactly 150,000,000 in an Imperial Standard AU, which will equal exactly 500 ls). ​

Definitely local calendars; you'd want them for sure if agriculture is a thing there, and a local calendar would be useful for an ephemeris for in-system travel. I also think that there would be local clocks, although the base unit would be the Imperial second; worlds with sols of not-exactly-one-Imperial-day are going to want it for local timekeeping to the extent that tracking daylight vs. darkness or managing time zones is important.

The device that appears in some of Weber's SF of "comp" ["Langhorne's Watch" in the Safehold series] to compensate for a non-integral hour count is IMO dumbstupidonwheels; it screws up time calculation if timezones are a local thing. Better to rejigger the clock so that a sol is an integral number of "hours" (which may not necessarily be exactly 3600 seconds) so that you've got regular orange wedges around the globe for your timezones. How many orange slices? You decide that on world-building; it's going to need to depend on how many hours (either Imperial Standard or local) in a sol, and what the planetary size is.

If your equal-hours comes out a few seconds off the actual length of a sol, you either add "leap seconds" at the end of a year, or you let them accumulate and compensate for them when you add intercalary days to the local anno.

Of course, if you really want to screw with people's heads, make the local dating system work sorta like the Mayan tzolkin/haab combination.

 

[FreeTrav]

And I shouldn't forget to point people at https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/preproom/jottings/calendars.html and https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/preproom/jottings/calendars2.html