French Republican Calendar

Stuff You Missed in History Class

The new year approaches. But what if you had to learn a completely new calendar for the coming year? For about a dozen years starting in the late 19th century, France abandoned the Gregorian calendar for an entirely different one.

Research: 

  • Alfred, Randy. “Sept. 22, 1792: Day One of Revolutionary Calendar.” Wired. Sept. 22, 2011. https://www.wired.com/2011/09/0922revolutionary-calendar/
  • Suplee, Curt. “A Brief History of Time-keeping.” Washington Post. Nov. 16, 1994. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/11/16/a-brief-history-of-time-keeping/1735193f-0c41-4657-af73-16e7b54a9665/
  • Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Gregorian calendar". Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gregorian-calendar
  • Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "year". Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Dec. 2015, https://www.britannica.com/science/year
  • Bickerman, E.J. , Ziadeh, Nicola Abdo , Buitenen, J.A.B. van , Proskouriakoff, Tatiana , Schmidt, John D. , Wiesenberg, E.J. , Lin, Chao and Ronan, Colin Alistair. "calendar". Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 Jul. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/science/calendar
  • Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Julian calendar". Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Jul. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/science/Julian-calendar
  • Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Roman republican calendar". Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 Apr. 2011, https://www.britannica.com/science/Roman-republican-calendar
  • Warren, Howard C. “Psychological Aspects of Calendar Reform.” The Scientific Monthly, vol. 33, no. 5, 1931, pp. 440–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/15247
  • Carrigan, Richard A. “Decimal Time: Unlike the Metric System of Measurements, Decimal Time Did Not Survive the French Revolution. But Is Dividing the Day by Tens a Possibility for the Future?” American Scientist, vol. 66, no. 3, 1978, pp. 305–13. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27848641
  • Zerubavel, Eviatar. “The French Republican Calendar: A Case Study in the Sociology of Time.” American Sociological Review, vol. 42, no. 6, 1977, pp. 868–77. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2094573
  • Simon, Ed. “Why the French Revolution’s ‘Rational’ Calendar Wasn’t.” JSTOR Daily. May 23, 2018. https://daily.jstor.org/why-the-french-revolutions-rational-calendar-wasnt/

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2022-12-19 39 min Transcript

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