September 3: The Day that Wasn’t
The 3 September 1752 did not exist in England and her colonies.
On 2 September 1752, England was still using the Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. The Julian calendar replaced an earlier Roman calendar which had been introduced by King Romulus in 753 BCE.
The Julian calendar was 365.25 days long and included a leap year every four years. However, because a year is not exactly 365 days, every 128 years, the Julian calendar became one day off. This extra day caused a problem for calculating seasons and religious events such as Easter. Therefore, in February 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar that bears his name.
The Gregorian calendar was adopted by Italy, Poland, Portugal, France and Spain in 1582, by Austria in 1584, and by Norway in 1700. However, it was not adopted in England and her colonies until September 1752. Because of the discrepancy of dates between the two calendars, England dropped 11 days in September. Therefore, 3-13 September 1752 did not exist in the British Empire.
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Bob Brooke, in his “The Mystery of the Missing Dates,” explains the confusion for genealogists—and other historians—caused by the fact that countries were using two different calendars but also because under the Julian calendar, the year began on March 1 and the Gregorian calendar began the year on January 1.
As Brooke explains, “Genealogists, especially those just starting out on their quest for ancestors, need to double-check dates found in English-speaking countries between 1582 and 1752. Are these dates listed as O.S.(Old Style) or N.S.(New Style)? Is there a date listed as 1750/51? That means it would have probably been between January 1 and March 24, which means that 1750 is the old-style notation and 1751, the new one. These double dates occur only in January, February and March–never in any other months and never after 1752.”
–Steven L. Berg, PhD
Photo caption: Pope Gregory XIII.
Julianne Ayers
For over thousands of years, society measured time by the position of the sun in the sky. Local time is “the time in a particular region or area expressed with reference to the meridian passing through it”, according to dictionary.com. This meant the exact time was to be told by the relationship of shadows on the ground and where the sun sat in the sky . Nature’s sundials allowed for our earliest ancestors to know how much time left they had in they day to hunt, gather, and build shelter. For centuries, local time was all that was needed for merchants, sailors, and workers.
As clocks developed around the world, they were all set to local time, even for large public clocks on which towns ran there was little need to be able to communicate time to folk in other places. Throughout history society’s functioned well enough together on their own time zones.
All that changed with the invention of the railroad. After the tracks had been laid in England, the railroad transformed commerce across the pond. Merchants no longer had to place orders weeks in advance. Labor could travel freely across much of Britain’s territory. Goods, supplies, and raw materials could be across the country quicker that ever thought possible. The industry forced people from distant lands to communicate to ensure the system ran smoothly. Searching for a more precise way too coordinate, standard time was born in England.
After the idea had been speculated on during the early 1800’s, The Great Western Railway became the first railroad company to adopt Greenwich Mean Time, commonly called London time. Other railroad companies followed suit. The Railway Clearing House, a spokes-corporation for industry standards advocated on Sept. 22nd 1847 that all railroad stations should adopt GMT. Within two years almost all train stations had made the change, and by 1855 most public clocks in Britain were set to run on GMT. Their legal system clung to using local time, so much so that in certain places voting polls opened 15 minutes before or after their posted times. After 20 some years of time discrepancy, The Statutes (Definitions of Time) Act took effect on Aug. 2nd 1880 effectively putting England completely on a standard time.
On Nov. 18th, 1883, standard timezones were instituted by railroads in the United States and Canada. In the U.S. few people had thought a standard time system would have it’s benefits as early as 1809 but it took years for any true consideration to be paid. Charles Dowd of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. made his first proposal to congress in 1870 suggesting the implementation of standard time zones across the U.S. and Canada. It wasn’t the first time this had been brought to their attention. 2 years later he revised and resubmitted his idea to congress and eleven years later it was adopted by U.S and Canadian railways.
The new time system wasn’t immediately accepted by all. Detroit kept it’s local time for 17 years until the City Council agreed that all clocks should be set back 28 minutes to be in accordance with standard time. Some fold obeyed the ordinance while others did not, seeing no point in changing their clocks from how they always were(or so they thought). After debate, the council retracted it’s decision and the city returned to it’s local time zone, until 1905 when Central Standard Time was fully adopted by a city-wide vote.
We often forget that the world that we live in is the result of the world that preceded it. Everyone has an innate sense of time, but for the world to function properly, the working world must be able to schedule on the same calendar, and arrive together at the same place and same time.
Englands time change reflected the changing needs needs of their society, much like the necessary adoption of the Gregorian Calendar. They needed to be able to conduct business with surrounding nations and have both countries’ receipts have the same date on them. Business men needed to be able to coordinate shipping and receiving cross country and across international borders, and to be able to effectively communicate that hundreds of miles away they had to be sure the other people were looking at the same clock. When America adopted standard time they needed the same things. Accuracy in capital allocation, more efficient logistics, a way to kickstart the better part of the Industrial Revolution.
If society today had to create its own time policy, without the reference of our current system, would something similar be thought of? Miranda Hitti wrote an article called “24 Hours Not Enough? See The Light” that was published in WebMD and on CBS news. Nasa researchers have found that the human body naturally adjusts to a 25 hour day. Researchers wrote that “the implications of these findings are important, because they could be used to treat circadian misalignment associated with space flight, shift work, and circadian rhythm sleep disorders.” That type of information could help create time policy that would take into account preventative measures against circadian rhythm disfunction by tuning people in to their true biological clocks.
“local time.” Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. 13 Sep. 2012.
“Daylight Savings TIme”. IDEA, 2008. http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/d.html. 9/13/2012
“A Walk Through Time”.The National Institute of Standards and Technology. U.S Department of Commerce. May 1995. http://www.nist.gov/pml/general/time/index.cfm. 9/13/2012
“24 Hours Not Enough? See The Light”. Miranda Hitti. WebMD 2008. CBS News. 9/13/2012