At 14:55 -0500 01/03/26, Gregory Peterson wrote:
>Bonjour Louis,
>
>I had heard that the metric calendar was not popular with the church
>because of the 10 day week and therefore 3 more days between
>worshipping days. Thus when the calendar was abandoned so was
>decimal time.
Indeed decimal time time was abandoned much faster than the
republican calendar, which was used for more than 11 years between
1794 and 1806 (plus 18 days in 1871 during the "Commune" of Paris).
The metric calendar was not popular with the Church because there was
no Sundays at all. It is said that one of the reasons for introducing
the "decade" of ten days was to have just a day off every ten days
instead of every seven : that was an increase in productivity by 40 %
- indeed a wrong appreciation, because most people did rest both on
new "decadis" and old sundays...
The population was not totally hostile to the new calendar : maybe
the "communication campaign" led by the poet Fabre d'Eglantine (who
found out the names of the months) and the painter David had been
efficient. What caused the death of the Republican calendar was
twofold : firstly, if there were signs that other countries were
going to adopt the metric system, it was evident that no other
country was prepared to adopt the Republican calendar. This would
result in serious problems for trade, etc. Secondly, its name :
Napoleon, who had in mind to become an Emperor, could not keep on
with this adjective ! But a non political excuse had to be found for
cancelling the calendar : they dug out a report from Laplace who, in
1795, had found a small error in the new calendar.
Louis
