The system, originally proposed by Moses Bruines Cotsworth (1859 – 1943) in 1902, was called the International Fixed Calendar. It splits the year into 13 months of 28 days each, with one (Year day) or two (Leap day) in leap years. These additional days each year do not belong to any month, and they are not associated with any day. They are shown in the spreadsheet below. The thirteenth month is added in the summer, between June and July, and is given the name Sol.
| IFC | Matching dates on the Gregorian calendar | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts on fixed day 1 | Ends on fixed day 28 | |
| January | January 1 | January 28 |
| February | January 29 | February 25 |
| March | February 26 | March 25* |
| April | March 26* | April 22* |
| May | April 23* | May 20* |
| June | May 21* | June 17* |
| Leap Day* | June 17 | |
| Sol | June 18 | July 15 |
| July | July 16 | August 12 |
| August | August 13 | September 9 |
| September | September 10 | October 7 |
| October | October 8 | November 4 |
| November | November 5 | December 2 |
| December | December 3 | December 30 |
| Year Day | December 31 | |
Note: In a leap year, these Gregorian dates between March and June are a day earlier. March in the Fixed Calendar always has a fixed number of days (28), and includes a potential Gregorian February 29. The rule for finding leap years is the same in both calendars. The spreadsheet and note both appear in the Wikipedia article, International Fixed Calendar.
George Eastman (1854 – 1932) insisted that the official Kodak company calendar use 13 months. The company did so, starting in 1928 and ending in 1969.
When I mentioned this project to my son, Alasdair, he had some reservations about the calendar and its use of the week. that period of seven days, that repeats itself without stopping. Unfortunately, the days of the week do stop once or twice in this new calendar, in the course of a year. Others may have other objections to the week, for its lack of an astronomical basis, which form most of the other time units such as the day = rotation of the earth, month based on the moon’s cycle, and the year, based on the earth¨s orbit of the sun..
The week’s origin is generally associated with Mesopotamia, for the Sumerians and the Babylonians They divided the year into weeks of seven days each, one of which they designated a day of recreation. The Babylonians named each of the days after one of the five planetary bodies known to them (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) and after the Sun and the Moon.
The ancient Jews borrowed this tradition, then embroidered it with a biblical account of the Creation, according to which, God worked for six days then rested on the seventh.
The Romans adopted some of the Babylonian practices. However, for centuries the Romans used a period of eight days in civil practice until, in 321 CE, Constantine established the seven-day week in the Roman calendar and designated Sunday as the first day of the week. Subsequent days bore the names Moon’s-day, Mars’s-day, Mercury’s-day, Jupiter’s-day, Venus’s-day, and Saturn’s-day. Because of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, he decreed that Sunday should be a day of rest and worship.
The days assigned by the Romans to the Sun, Moon, and Saturn were retained for the corresponding days of the week in English (Sunday, Monday, and Saturday) and several related languages. The Roman names for the other days of the week were retained in Romance languages. (For example, Friday is Venus’s-day = viernes (Spanish) and vendredi (French). The other weekday names in English are derived from Anglo-Saxon words for the gods of Teutonic mythology. Tuesday comes from Tiu, or Tiw, the Anglo-Saxon name for Tyr, the Norse god of war, one of the sons of Odin, or Woden. Wednesday is named after this supreme deity. Thursday = Thor’s-day, that celebrates Thor, the god of thunder. Friday refers to Frigg’s-day, where Frigg is the wife of Odin, representing love and beauty, in Norse mythology.
There are similar calanders, including some that rely on six day weeks. These result in 60 weeks in a year, with 5 days over, except in leap years, when there would be 61 weeks in the year. This could be further divided into either 10 months, each with 6 weeks each, or 12 months, with 5 weeks each.
Cotsworth is an interesting person. He was born in Willitoft, East Yorkshire, and worked for the North Eastern Railway, as an accountant, statistician and the author of a series of books on railway rates. He married Kezia Gardiner in 1884. They had six children. They immigrated to New Westminster, my home town, in British Columbia in 1910, after he was abruptly fired from the railway for union activity. He was a Unitarian, as I was, before I became a Bahaï, which he did not. In British Columbia, he worked for the Provincial Government, as chair of the Civil Service Reform committee, which produced a damning report in 1915 titled, The Crisis in B.C.: An Appeal for Investigation.
In 1916 he wrote The Rational Almanac, a historical book that traces the evolution of calendars and timekeeping from ancient civilizations to the modern era. Despite its title, the book is not a traditional calendar of upcoming events or weather forecasts, but rather a deep critique of existing calendar systems alongside proposals for sweeping calendar reform.
His daughter, Lena, founded York House School, with the name referring to her birthplace.
Note: Finding an appropriate name for a weblog post can be challenging. In part, this can be because of its intended focus. The choices here alternated between International Fixed Calendar, a dating sytem, and Moses Bruines Cotsworth, a person. Part of the reason for selecting the dating system is that it allows me to include related information about people, not just Cotsworth, but other promotors of the calendar, such as Kodak founder George Eastman.