A curious phenomenon is attracting the attention of the web after some iPhone users, in their device’s calendar, noticed that in the month of October, 1582, ten days to go.
Although we don’t want to know how this peculiarity came to be noticed, know that it is not a programming error, but a reflection a real historical event which changed the way we measure time.
People in 1582 went to sleep on October 4th and woke up on October 15th.
In 1582, under the pontificate of Pope Gregory XIIIthe Catholic Church adopted a new dating system: the Gregorian calendar. This calendar, which we still use it todayreplaced the previous one Julian calendarintroduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC
The main difference between the two systems concerns the management of the leap years. The Julian calendar added a day every 4 yearswhile the Gregorian one is more precise, excluding secular years not divisible by 400.
The main reason for this change was religious. Over the centuries, the inaccuracy of the Julian calendar had caused a shift in the spring equinoxessential for determining the date of Easter.
To realign the calendar with the solar movements, it was therefore necessary, “skip” 10 days and October was chosen to make this peculiar adjustment, as it is free of important religious holidays.
This explains why modern calendars, including those on smartphones, show this date jump to October 1582. This is a historical detail that the programmers included for accuracy, not a system error.
The adoption of the Gregorian calendar, however, was not immediate throughout the world. Several countries they adopted it at different timescreating a discrepancy in dates between different nations for a time.
Today, The Gregorian calendar is the global standard for civil uses and only some religious and cultural calendars continue to use different systems.
This curiosity born following a small detail in the iPhone calendar reminds us how the measurement of time is a human conventionsubject to change and adaptation throughout history. At the same time, it highlights the attention to historical detail in the programming of modern devices.
Source: www.tomshw.it
