Project by Kalyani Tupkary. Website built by Jon Packles.
Calendar Collective is a living archive of alternate calendars. It is an ongoing investigation for collecting, cataloguing and publishing calendars that are little-known to our world. We use openly contributed voicemails as are our unique research material. The archive offers an uncommon collection of calendars traced through these unwritten and slightly incongruous fragments.
We are open most days about midday, seldom as early as the daybreak, some days as late as dusk. We close about when the sun goes down or twilight and occasionally at midnight but sometimes even beyond midnight. Some days we are not here at all, but lately, we are here most of the time except when we are somewhere else. So, if you would like to contribute, please leave a voicemail at +1(646) 371-5045.
Here the night is variable. It fluctuates with the phases of the
moon. Some nights are short while others long.
Listen to the Voicemail
Here the length of the day is attuned to the sunlight.The day is
as large as the sunlight one gets.
Listen to the Voicemail
Here a day is 24 hours long. But some hours are more colorful
than others.
Listen to the Voicemail
Here time blooms and withers with opening and closing of
flowers.
Listen to the Voicemail
Here time is aligned on the first day of the week. Then it
begins to drift away in no fixed order or direction, until the
start of the next week when it is aligned again.
Listen to the Voicemail
In a scalding-hot argument against the 12-month calendar, a
September 1927 issue of The Outlook proclaimed: 'A month is a
wholly irrational division of time. It has no relation to
anything in astronomy, or human experience. It is an inaccurate
and varying measure of time that is a constant annoyance in
business and a misleading unit in science. It has no religious
significance. A month is nothing but just a bad habit.'
The International Fixed Calendar is a
solar calendar
with 13 months of 28 days each. It is a
perennial calendar
as every date is fixed to the same weekday every year. Momentum
behind the International Fixed Calendar, a 13-month calendar
with 28 days in each month and a leftover day at the end of each
year (it also followed the Gregorian rules with regards to Leap
Years), was never stronger than in the late 1920s. Similar to
Auguste Comte's
positivist calendar
(created in 1849), this particular 13-month invention came from
the mind of Moses Cotsworth, a North Eastern Railway advisor
bothered by inexplicably varying monthly earnings over the
traditional 12-month period. In 1902, driven by a desire to
simplify the ‘irrational calendar’ Moses B Cotsworth presented a
solar calendar for calendar reform. His solar calendar had 13
months of 28 days each. Every date was fixed to the same weekday
every year. Every week starts with a Sunday and ends with a
Saturday. Cotsworth's plan quickly gained popularity among
businessmen, especially in transportation and logistics. His
biggest ally, however, was photography pioneer and Kodak
founder, George Eastman. Impressed by the symmetry of this
hyper-rational calendar, George Eastman adopted it for use in
his Eastman Kodak Company 1928 to 1989 while the rest of the
world followed the Gregorian calendar.
Here one is either an Even or an Odd. Evens are born on Even
days. They work on Even days and rest on Odd days. Odds do the
opposite. But Evens get an additional holiday at the year end.
Listen to the Voicemail
Here a year has only weeks. Each week with 10 days. Every day
lasts for 10 hours with 100 minutes in an hour and 100 seconds
in a minute.
Listen to the Voicemail
The French Republican Revolutionary Calendar established a new timekeeping system from 1793 until 1806. “This was introduced not to correct some astronomical discrepancy but to mark a break with the past. The Church, the guardian of the calendar with its feasts and fasts and saints’ days was one of the sources of power of the hated ancient order; it had to be done away with.”1 It employed ‘decimal time’ in order to be rational (in contrast to religious “irrationality”), and parallel the metric system. Using metric time was a proclamation that all Frenchmen became equal. A year had 12 months of 30 days each with 5 days at the year-end. Hence its power lay in its symbolic value rather than practical purpose. A leap year was to have an extra intercalary day. Months were standardized into three equal decades of 10 days each, each day was divided into 10 hours, hours into 100 minutes, and minutes into 100 seconds. This period also saw watchmakers build decimal clocks and watches. “Despite its revolutionary symbolism, the new calendar turned out to be unpopular and inconvenient. The French workman objected to working a 10-day week; most people objected to working on Sundays; the decimal hours caused intolerable confusion; business with the rest of Europe (still adhering to the Gregorian calendar) became difficult. As revolutionary fervour ebbed away, the provisions of the calendar were gradually repealed. In September 1805, Sunday was restored as the day of rest, and from 1 January 1806, the Gregorian calendar was reinstated.”
It was in May of 1929, at the fifth Congress of the Soviets of
the Union, that it was proposed to alter the existing work-week
in order to utilize expensive machinery in the factories more
effectively and so raise productivity. The proposer, Larin,
managed to interest Stalin in the project and on 26 August of
the same year, the Council of People's Commissaries announced
that the old work-week would be abolished and be replaced by a
continuous production week known as 'nepreryvka'. A decree of 24
September modified the proposal by replacing the sevenday cycle
with a five day one. The workers were issued with coloured
slips of paper to tell them which day to take off: yellow,
orange, red, purple, and green. They were to observe a day off
on the day that fell on their colour.
While it did increase productivity as intended (80 per cent of
the country was working at any given time), it disrupted social
system by segregating families and friends, workers were
demoralized, and machines could not be routinely maintained.
However, there were two main disadvantages to nepreryvka. First,
it had a profound, disruptive, and unwelcome effect on family
and social life; members of the same family, friends, or
marriage partners, who had been given different colours.
Although the Soviet workers got more time off than then Western
counterparts they were rarely able to spend time together.
We are open most days about midday, seldom as early as the daybreak, some days as late as dusk. We close about when the sun goes down or twilight and occasionally at midnight but sometimes even beyond midnight. Some days we are not here at all, but lately, we are here most of the time except when we are somewhere else. So, if you would like to contribute, please leave a voicemail at +1(646) 371-5045.