Re: [LEAPSECS] building consensus

From: Zefram <zefram_at_FYSH.ORG>
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 10:32:08 +0100

Ed Davies wrote:
>It's also an interesting quote in that it suggests that the 1875
>Convention du mètre is important in the international definition
>of the Gregorian calendar. Anybody know more on that?

I understand that the latest version of ISO 8601 goes further and
identifies the date of the signing of the Convention fully as 1875-05-20.
Without that the standard would be ambiguous as to which label applies
to which day.

The Convention du Metre had nothing to do with calendars itself.
Its signing is merely used as a well-known epoch. It is not surprising
that an ISO committee chose as their epoch an event in legal metrology.

Pope Gregory, of course, used a different epoch. The original Papal Bull
didn't use a well-known event such as this, but instead effectively said
1582 October 5 Julian = 1582 October 15 Gregorian.

-zefram
Received on Tue Jun 06 2006 - 02:32:26 PDT