🚚 Free Worldwide Shipping on All Orders!Shop Now
The Calendar: The 5000 Year Struggle To Align The Clock and the Heavens, and What Happened To The Missing Ten Days
HomeStore

The Calendar: The 5000 Year Struggle To Align The Clock and the Heavens, and What Happened To The Missing Ten Days

The Calendar: The 5000 Year Struggle To Align The Clock and the Heavens, and What Happened To The Missing Ten Days

NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.
Author: David Ewing Duncan

Format: Paperback

Number of Pages: 384


The 5,000-year struggle to align the heavens with the clock and what happened to the missing ten days. Measuring the daily and yearly cycle of the cosmos has never been entirely straightforward.The year 2000 is alternatively the year 2544 (Buddhist), 6236 (Ancient Egyptian), 5761 (Jewish) or simply the year of the Dragon (Chinese). The story of the creation of the Western calendar is a story of emperors and popes, mathematicians and monks, and the growth of scientific calculation to the point where, bizarrely, our measurement of time by atomic pulses is now more acurate than Time itself: the Earth is an elderly lady and slightly eccentric - she loses half a second a century. Days have been invented (Julius Caesar needed an extra 80 days in 46BC), lost (Pope Gregory XIII ditched ten days in 1582) and moved (because Julius Caesar had thirty-one in his month, Augustus determined that he should have the same, so he pinched one from February). The Calendar links politics and religion, astronomy and mathematics, Cleopatra and Stephen Hawking. And it is published as millions of computer users wonder what will happen when, after 31 December 1999, their dates run out...
$2.12

Original: $7.06

-70%
The Calendar: The 5000 Year Struggle To Align The Clock and the Heavens, and What Happened To The Missing Ten Days—

$7.06

$2.12

The Calendar: The 5000 Year Struggle To Align The Clock and the Heavens, and What Happened To The Missing Ten Days

NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.
Author: David Ewing Duncan

Format: Paperback

Number of Pages: 384


The 5,000-year struggle to align the heavens with the clock and what happened to the missing ten days. Measuring the daily and yearly cycle of the cosmos has never been entirely straightforward.The year 2000 is alternatively the year 2544 (Buddhist), 6236 (Ancient Egyptian), 5761 (Jewish) or simply the year of the Dragon (Chinese). The story of the creation of the Western calendar is a story of emperors and popes, mathematicians and monks, and the growth of scientific calculation to the point where, bizarrely, our measurement of time by atomic pulses is now more acurate than Time itself: the Earth is an elderly lady and slightly eccentric - she loses half a second a century. Days have been invented (Julius Caesar needed an extra 80 days in 46BC), lost (Pope Gregory XIII ditched ten days in 1582) and moved (because Julius Caesar had thirty-one in his month, Augustus determined that he should have the same, so he pinched one from February). The Calendar links politics and religion, astronomy and mathematics, Cleopatra and Stephen Hawking. And it is published as millions of computer users wonder what will happen when, after 31 December 1999, their dates run out...

Product Information

Shipping & Returns

Description

NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.
Author: David Ewing Duncan

Format: Paperback

Number of Pages: 384


The 5,000-year struggle to align the heavens with the clock and what happened to the missing ten days. Measuring the daily and yearly cycle of the cosmos has never been entirely straightforward.The year 2000 is alternatively the year 2544 (Buddhist), 6236 (Ancient Egyptian), 5761 (Jewish) or simply the year of the Dragon (Chinese). The story of the creation of the Western calendar is a story of emperors and popes, mathematicians and monks, and the growth of scientific calculation to the point where, bizarrely, our measurement of time by atomic pulses is now more acurate than Time itself: the Earth is an elderly lady and slightly eccentric - she loses half a second a century. Days have been invented (Julius Caesar needed an extra 80 days in 46BC), lost (Pope Gregory XIII ditched ten days in 1582) and moved (because Julius Caesar had thirty-one in his month, Augustus determined that he should have the same, so he pinched one from February). The Calendar links politics and religion, astronomy and mathematics, Cleopatra and Stephen Hawking. And it is published as millions of computer users wonder what will happen when, after 31 December 1999, their dates run out...

You may also like

NEW
Thumbnail 1

The Secret River

$5.31

-70%NEW
Thumbnail 1

Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland

$10.54

$3.16

-70%NEW
Thumbnail 1

The Book Thief

$5.31

$1.59

-70%NEW
Thumbnail 1

Americanah

$8.14

$2.44

-70%NEW
Thumbnail 1

Modern Railways International Review

$10.59

$3.18

-70%NEW
Thumbnail 1

Australian Pioneer Women

$10.59

$3.18

-70%NEW
Thumbnail 1

Silent Magic

$21.17

$6.35

-70%NEW
Thumbnail 1

Mother of Pearl

$7.06

$2.12

NEW
Thumbnail 1

The Midnight Library: The No.1 Sunday Times bestseller and worldwide phenomenon

$14.11

-70%NEW
Thumbnail 1

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

$14.12

$4.24

NEW
Thumbnail 1

The Goldfinch

$8.47

NEW
Thumbnail 1

Where is The Green Sheep?

$11.99

The Calendar: The 5000 Year Struggle To Align The Clock and the Heavens, and What Happened To The Missing Ten Days | Book Grocer