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Mathematics and Primary Sources: In Search of the Perfect Calendar

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This post is by Michael Apfeldorf of the Library of Congress.

Sometimes analyzing primary sources can help us reflect on commonplace aspects of our culture that we take for granted, illustrating how arbitrary they are, or how they change over time.

Joseph Collins’ 1939 “Proposed Utopian Calendar” provides one such example – an attempt by Collins to reform the Gregorian calendar, which had been in place for more than 350 years and