OLD AND NEW STYLE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 29, 1879

OLD AND NEW STYLE.

[I SEND you “The Gregorian Year, and Old and New Style.” I took it from an almanac which I bought more than twenty years ago. A. S. H.]

The inquiry is often made, “What is the meaning of the expression, ‘March 7, 1738-9?’” The real date is March 7, 1739. The civil or legal year in England formerly commenced on the 25th day of March. This practice continued throughout the British dominions till the year 1752. Then the new or the Gregorian style was introduced, which makes the year commence the 1st of January. But before that period (1752), as some other nations had adopted the new style, it was usual for English writers to designate both years, if the event occurred before the 25th day of March. Thus we have Washington’s birth designated, February 11, 1731-2. That is, if the year commenced the 25th of March, it would be February 11, 1731. If the year commenced the first of January, it would be February 11, 1732, or, according to new style, February 22, 1732.

In order to make the above statements more fully clear, it is needful to remember that a year is designated to include the exact period of time which the earth takes to make one revolution around the sun. This is accomplished in 365 days and nearly six hours; but as the calendar must consist of complete days, these six hours are omitted, and in four years they make up a whole day, when one is added to the year, making what is called a leap-year. This, however, is not strictly correct, for it is ascertained by accurate calculations that a solar year is exactly 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 57.7 seconds; consequently, in putting on the six hours, we add 11 minutes 12.4 seconds in four years. This, in the course of 158½ years would amount to 24 hours, or a complete day. If this were permitted to go on, the first of January would gradually fall back toward mid-summer; and in the time of Pope Gregory XIII. (1582) it was found that the vernal equinox, which A. D. 325, happened on the 21st of March, actually occurred on the 10th. The pope, for the purpose of restoring the correctness of the calendar, ordered 10 days to be dropped that year. This reformation was called “the new style,” while the former calendar was denominated “the old style.” This new style was not adopted in England until 1752, when it was found that another day had accumulated. An act of Parliament was then passed, in which it was directed that 11 days be dropped out of the calendar in 1752.

In this country the old style was not discarded in colloquial discourse until about fifty years ago. To guard against the disarrangement of the calendar in future, chronologers now omit the leap-year at the end of three or four centuries, which plan is found to balance the excess of 11 minutes, 12.4 seconds, this being added by making every fourth year leap-year, as people generally suppose. The year 1800 was not a leap-year, for one of these intercalary days had accumulated, and was dropped; and the same will have to be done in 1900. There are now, therefore, twelve days’ difference between the old and new styles; and in order to compute the date of events correctly, and not fall into blunders which even some able historians have not avoided, we should recollect to allow ten days for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, eleven for the eighteenth, and twelve for the nineteenth.