What are some good books on calendars, chronology and the division and measurement of time?

March 2, 2008 7:35 AM

What are some good books on calendars, chronology and the division and measurement of time? I'm interested in the history, physics and especially mathematics of it all. A giant encyclopedic reference tome would be excellent. Thanks!
posted by hoverboards don't work on water to science & nature (10 comments total)

David Landes, Revolution in Time. More on clocks than calendars, but detailed and comprehensive nonetheless.
posted by googly at 7:37 AM on March 2

You may have seen these before, but there's some excellent stuff on line.
Calendar zone
Calendar FAQ
posted by adamrice at 7:47 AM on March 2

I highly recommend Dava Sobel's Longitude. It's the tale of a humble clockmaker who solved the greatest scientific problem of his day -- that of measuring longitudes accurately while on board a ship. And he did this not using the elaborate methods of his competitors which involved celestial charts and complicated measurements, but simply by building a clock that remained accurate at sea. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of chronology.
posted by peacheater at 8:23 AM on March 2 [2 favorites]

The Calendar FAQ recommends The Oxford Companion to the Year, which appears to be exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 9:01 AM on March 2

For a detailed technical work including algorithms for converting between different calendars, you really can't do better than Calendrical Calculations.
posted by plep at 9:49 AM on March 2

Mostly not on the mathematics of it, more the anthropology and cultural construction of time:

Bibliography of Time


Alfred Gell: The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images, reviews calendrical systems globally in the context of a quite academic social-theory approach.


The Geography of Time

Chronotypes: the Construction of Time

The Human Organization of Time: Temporal Realities and Experience

This previous AskMe may have some interest for you.
posted by Rumple at 11:05 AM on March 2

The first several chapters of Boorstins The Discoverers is devoted to the causes, history and consequences of our improved ability to measure time.
posted by shothotbot at 12:25 PM on March 2

It's not a book, but this timeline of timelines has a bunch of interesting information about the history of humanity's measurement of time.
posted by mismatched at 12:51 PM on March 2

Historywise, Paolo Rossi's The Dark Abyss of Time: History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico offers an interesting view of the displacement of Biblical chronologies by scientific ones in 17th/18th century Europe.
posted by misteraitch at 1:40 PM on March 2

A Sideways Look At Time by Jay Griffiths.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:52 PM on March 2