10 Times Humanity Tried to Redesign the Calendar

For most of us, the Gregorian calendar is simply the way time works. But history is filled with people and cultures who believed they could build something more rational, accurate, or aligned with nature or ideology. Some were utopian dreams, others were bureaucratic rethinks—but all of them tried to challenge what we now take for granted: how we divide up days, months, and years.

Here are 10 real attempts to reinvent the calendar—some were used, some almost were, and some still live in niche corners of the world.

Related: Ten Bizarre Discoveries about Ancient Civilizations and Our Ancestors

10 Leap Seconds and Atomic Timekeeping (1972–Present)

With the invention of atomic clocks, timekeeping became far more precise than Earth’s actual rotation. Atomic time uses cesium atoms, which oscillate at exactly 9,192,631,770 times per second, to define a second. The problem is that Earth’s rotation isn’t constant—it slows down due to tidal friction and other forces, leading to a gradual drift between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and solar time.

To correct for this drift, leap seconds were introduced in 1972. When needed, these seconds are added on irregular intervals, usually on June 30 or December 31. They’ve caused real headaches: In 2012 and 2015, several major websites, airlines, and trading platforms experienced system crashes or data errors due to improper handling of the leap second. Google famously created a workaround by “smearing” the leap second across many hours. While only 27 leap seconds have been added since 1972, the International Telecommunication Union voted in 2022 to abolish leap seconds by 2035, reflecting the global push to simplify timekeeping and prioritize atomic precision over astronomical accuracy.^[1]

9 The Discordian Calendar (1960s–Present)

Invented by Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley in 1963 as part of their satirical religion Discordianism, the Discordian calendar is deliberately absurd and anti-order. The year is divided into five 73-day seasons: Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, and The Aftermath. Each week has five days—Sweetmorn, Boomtime, Pungenday, Prickle-Prickle, and Setting Orange. Dates are tracked with quirky numerals and random holidays, the most famous being Mungday and St. Tib’s Day, the latter appearing only on leap years.

Though meant as a parody of religious and bureaucratic timekeeping, the Discordian calendar has been used in real systems. Early versions of Unix included an option for Discordian date output. Some open-source communities and hacker forums still support Discordian time formats for humor or ideological reasons. The calendar was also referenced in Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy, which helped cement it in counterculture lore. Its structure is intentionally impractical, and that’s the point—it’s a philosophical jab at how humans pretend time is neat and manageable.^[2]

8 The Hanke–Henry Permanent Calendar (2011)

Economist Steve Hanke and astrophysicist Richard Conn Henry proposed a modern overhaul of the Gregorian calendar that would make every year identical. Their system features 12 months with a repeating pattern of 30–30–31 days per quarter, creating a year of exactly 364 days. Every January 1 would fall on a Sunday, as would every July 1, September 1, and so on. To align with the solar year, a “leap week” would be added every 5 or 6 years.

The calendar eliminates shifting holidays and makes business and academic scheduling incredibly predictable, a key selling point for economists and corporations. Payroll, school terms, and quarterly reports would always fall on the same dates and weekdays. But religious groups and calendar traditionalists pushed back hard. The biggest controversy lies in its disruption of the 7-day week cycle, which many cultures regard as sacred and immutable. Critics also point out that birthdays and anniversaries would always fall on the same weekday, robbing life of variety. Despite academic support, no governments have seriously considered implementation.^[3]

7 Swatch Internet Time (1998)

In a burst of late-1990s futurism, Swatch introduced Internet Time, a metric-based alternative to time zones designed to unify the digital world. Instead of hours and minutes, days were divided into 1,000 “beats,” each lasting 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Midnight in Biel, Switzerland (home of Swatch HQ) was designated @000, and time progressed uniformly around the globe. There were no time zones, daylight saving, or AM/PM—just a universal beat count.

Swatch tried to market Internet Time through branding and hardware. It produced special “Beat” watches, partnered with MTV Europe, and even pitched the format to the European Space Agency. The idea gained a niche following in early online forums and games like Phantasy Star Online, which used @beats to coordinate play across regions. But it never took off in mainstream culture. Most users found it confusing, and critics mocked it as a marketing stunt. Still, it occasionally resurfaces in tech circles, remembered as a relic of the internet’s idealistic adolescence.^[4]

6 The Positivist Calendar (1849)

Proposed by French philosopher Auguste Comte, the Positivist Calendar sought to replace religious influence with secular and scientific reverence. It used a 13-month, 28-day structure similar to later reforms but rebranded time itself in honor of humanity’s intellectual elite. Each month was named after a historical icon—Moses, Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes, Caesar, Dante, and so on—with weeks and days named after categories of thinkers like poets, philosophers, and artists.

It was less about utility and more about ideology: Comte envisioned time as a moral force, with the calendar used in “Religion of Humanity” ceremonies. Though never officially adopted, it was promoted in French secularist circles and inspired some academic institutions in Brazil and France to toy with it. A small Positivist church in Rio de Janeiro even used it internally into the 20th century. Like Comte’s larger worldview, the calendar was sweeping, idealistic, and ultimately ignored by the public.^[5]

5 The Mayan Long Count Calendar

Used for centuries by the Maya civilization across Mesoamerica, the Long Count Calendar tracked vast spans of time with unmatched astronomical precision. Rather than focusing on solar years or lunar months, it was based on a base-20 and base-18 numbering system, with units like the k’in (1 day), winal (20 days), tun (360 days), k’atun (7,200 days), and the baktun (144,000 days). This allowed the Maya to track time over thousands of years and align major events with celestial movements.

The calendar didn’t reset annually like ours; it logged time cumulatively, referencing a “creation date” of 3114 BCE, from which all other events were counted forward. The 13th baktun ended on December 21, 2012, leading to widespread (mostly incorrect) doomsday predictions in pop culture. In truth, this date was just the end of one cycle—like a Mayan millennium—after which the calendar simply kept going. Inscriptions on stelae and temple walls suggest the Maya used the Long Count to anchor myths, history, and prophecy, not just keep track of planting seasons.^[6]

4 The World Calendar (1930s–1950s)

Backed by American reformer Elisabeth Achelis, The World Calendar was a globalist attempt to standardize timekeeping by making every year identical. The system preserved 12 months but arranged them into 4 quarters, each with 91 days (two 30-day months and one 31-day month). Like the International Fixed Calendar, it added an extra day at the end of the year (Worldsday), which wasn’t part of any week, to keep the calendar aligned with the solar year. A second extra day would be added every leap year.

Achelis gained significant international traction—India and China expressed interest, and the League of Nations took up the proposal. It was hailed by businesses and academics as a way to streamline fiscal planning and global trade. But the sticking point was religious: removing one day from the weekly cycle disrupted the sacred 7-day rhythm followed by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Religious leaders warned it would make weekly worship scheduling impossible. The World Calendar faded from political discussion as World War II and the Cold War shifted global priorities.^[7]

3 The Soviet Revolutionary Calendar (1929–1940)

Determined to purge religion from everyday life, the USSR introduced radical calendar reforms under Stalin. In 1929, they implemented a five-day week, where each citizen was assigned a rest day marked by a color. The idea was to keep factories running continuously—there would be no weekends and no shared rest days. But this system caused chaos: workers couldn’t see family or friends, machines broke down without scheduled downtime, and productivity plummeted.

In 1931, the state revised it to a six-day week with a shared day of rest on every sixth day. This, too, proved unpopular, confusing to workers, and disconnected from religious traditions and agricultural rhythms. The calendar made it nearly impossible to follow Christian or Jewish observances, which was by design. By 1940, the government quietly reinstated the 7-day week and Gregorian calendar, ending one of the most extreme attempts to restructure time ever enacted by a modern state.^[8]

2 The International Fixed Calendar (1920s–1970s)

Proposed by Moses B. Cotsworth, the International Fixed Calendar divided the year into 13 months of 28 days, giving each month exactly 4 weeks, for a total of 364 days. The extra day was added as a “Year Day” outside the weekly cycle—making January 1 fall on a Sunday every single year. This calendar ensured perfect symmetry: every month would start on the same weekday, and every date would always correspond to the same day of the week.

Eastman Kodak adopted it company-wide in 1928 and used it internally until 1989, publishing all business reports and employee schedules in this format. Banks and international trade groups explored its adoption, and its logic appealed to engineers and statisticians. However, religious and national resistance blocked its spread—the floating “Year Day” broke the 7-day Sabbath cycle, which caused outrage among churches. Despite its rational appeal, it was just too disruptive to centuries of tradition.^[9]

1 The French Republican Calendar (1793–1805)

Created during the radical phase of the French Revolution, the French Republican Calendar was part of an effort to erase royalist and religious influence from every corner of life. The year began on the autumn equinox and had 12 months of 30 days each, with names like Thermidor (“heat”), Frimaire (“frost”), and Germinal (“germination”). Each month was divided into three 10-day weeks, and days were renamed to reflect nature and industry—no saints, no Sundays.

The calendar also introduced decimal time: 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute. It was used for government documents, public festivals, and even clocks and coins. But it was deeply unpopular. Farmers disliked how it disrupted planting schedules. Religious citizens resisted the erasure of traditional feasts and holy days. It never caught on outside revolutionary France. Napoleon abolished it in 1805, restoring the Gregorian calendar, and by then, most French people had already returned to the old way of counting days.^[10]