January 1, 2024 • 33 mins
People have kept diaries and recorded notes since writing was invented. But planners as we think of them today have their roots in almanacs.
Research:
- Atkins, Samuel. “Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense.” W. Bradford. 1685. https://books.google.com/books/about/Kalendarium_Pennsilvaniense_Or_America_s.html?id=wT0wAAAAYAAJ
- Nichols, Charles L. “Notes on the Almanacs of Massachusetts.” American Antiquarian Society. 1912. https://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/45647891.pdf
- Railton, Stephen. “Anti-Slavery Almanacs.” University of Virginia. https://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/gallaaaf.html
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "almanac". Encyclopedia Britannica, 9 Oct. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/almanac
- Badian, E.. "fasti". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Dec. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/topic/fasti-Roman-calendar
- Winlock, H. E. “The Origin of the Ancient Egyptian Calendar.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 83, no. 3, 1940, pp. 447–64. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/985113
- Smith, William, et a. “A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.” Albemarle Street, London. John Murray. 1890. Accessed online: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0063:entry=fasti-cn
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Richard Pynson". Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Jan. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Pynson
- Driver, Martha W. “When Is a Miscellany Not Miscellaneous? Making Sense of the ‘Kalender of Shepherds.’” The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 33, 2003, pp. 199–214. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3509026
- Hockey, Thomas et al. (eds.). “The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers.” Springer Reference. New York: Springer, 2007, pp. 1258-1260 https://islamsci.mcgill.ca/RASI/BEA/Zarqali_BEA.htm
- “Diaries and Planners Market Size, Share, Growth, and Industry Analysis by Type (Diaries and Planners) By Application (Premium, and Mass), Latest Trends, Regional Insights, and Forecast From 2024 to 2031.” Business Research Insights. April 2023. https://www.businessresearchinsights.com/market-reports/diaries-and-planners-market-102040
- Hubrigh, Joachim. “An almanacke, and prognostication, for the yeare of our Lorde God. 1565. : seruing for all Europia, and also most necessary for all students, marchantes, mariners and trauellers, both by sea and lande, composed and gathered by Ioakim Hubrigh, Doctor in Phisick. Also the most principall fayres in Englande, very necessary for people that doe resorte to the same.” Imprinted by Henry Denham for William Pickring. 1565. Accessed online: https://catalog.folger.edu/record/170062?ln=en
- Shank, Michael. "Regiomontanus". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Jul. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Regiomontanus
- Danforth, Samuel and Royster, Paul (transcriber & editor), "Samuel Danforth's Almanack Poems and Chronological Tables 1647-1649" (1649). Faculty Publications, UNL Libraries. 36. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/36
- “History of The Nautical Almanac.” Astronomical Applications Department, U.S. Government. https://aa.usno.navy.mil/publications/na_history
- “William Pierce.” Town Memorials, Winthrop, Massachusetts.” https://winthropmemorials.org/great-allotment/pages/william-pierce.html
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Happy New Year. Yeah,
it's twenty twenty four as we record this, where as
(00:22):
we share this, we're recording in twenty twenty three, to
be honest, but this is a time of year it's
come up for us before where we start to talk
about things like calendars and planners, which are my personal love.
Put me in a planner store and I'm very happy.
And we have talked a little bit about these topics before.
We talked about almanacs a little bit on our episode
(00:43):
on Benjamin Banneker, and we have certainly talked about calendars
before a few times, but one you may remember is
our episode about the French Republican calendar. But I really
found myself wondering specifically about day planners recently because I
was setting up my twenty twenty four to one and
I was getting excited. It has droids on it. We
(01:03):
love it because I still love a physical paper planner.
I know not everyone does, and some people have transitioned
over to digital. But I started to wonder about when
people started using actual planners, and that really means that
we have to talk about almanacs because the two are
kind of tightly linked in how one led to the other.
(01:27):
And so here we are today. If you're making your planner,
I hope this is a good listening material for you
to review the basics and almanac normally contains things like
a calendar, times for the sunrise and sunset, astronomical information, tides, climate, holidays, festivals,
(01:48):
that kind of thing. You can make a comparison of
an almanac being kind of like an analog version of
a smartphone for people living in pre digital times. Of course,
there are still almanacs a day, including some that have
their own web pages, which is a little funny to me.
So everything you might need to know in terms of time, weather, winter, plants,
(02:08):
that was all in the almanac, so folks had a
ready reference to stay informed on those kinds of things.
So the roots of almanacs are found in calendars that
had notations correlated to dates those date back all the
way to ancient Egypt. These calendars were tied very closely
to the activity of the Nile River, as it was
(02:29):
the cornerstone of survival, so the phases of flood, spring,
and low water, which was also the harvest period were
all noted alongside marking the days. In Egyptians of the
time understood the lunar cycle, and they had marked the
idea of twelve cycles in a year, but the three
seasons of the Nile may have really been the more
(02:49):
important markers to their calendar. This is actually a matter
of debate among historians. But the period of flood ran
from fall to midwinter. Spring, which was also called emergence
sometimes when you see people talking about it today, was
from midwinter so like January, to late spring around May,
and then what they called their harvest encompassed summer and
(03:12):
into the autumn. But these weren't fixed dates, because the
movements of the Nile could shift year to year, and
predictions of those shifts would be baked into the calendar,
although that meant that there was a little bit of variability.
On average, the year ended up following three hundred and
sixty five days as we recognize it today, but there
were some that were a little longer and a little shorter.
(03:33):
We don't know exactly when this way of tracking the
year began, but there are rudimentary versions going back to
three thousand BCE. Ancient Greek and Roman calendars also incorporated
culturally important information along with the days and the years,
things like feasts, days that were likely to bring good
fortune or bad. While we don't have surviving examples of
(03:58):
Greek almanacs, they were mentioned specifically by the mathematical commentator
Theon of Alexandria, who lived in the fourth century. He
incidentally was the father of Hypatia. Yeah, I feel like
in doing an episode about calendars and almanacs, we bump
up against so many of our Yeah, it's a two
other things we've talked about. Yeah. So, then the fasti,
(04:19):
which means days, was sort of a Roman list version
of an almanac. Fastidias, for example, translates to lawful days,
and that list indicated what days it was legal to
conduct various kinds of business. Fasti sacri were lists of
sacred days, and Roman religious leaders were responsible for mapping
(04:40):
out the various important times of the years, including religious
festivals and observations. Then, according to the eighteen ninety Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Antiquities, at some point a scribe
is said to have completely broken with tradition and published
the calendar used by the priests of Rome for the
(05:01):
public to see. Sometimes this is described as displaying tablets.
It's very dramatic. And then it was kind of like
time had become democratized in that moment, and this catalyzed
the development of a common calendar that included a more
comprehensive collection of information. The Chinese tung Shing is an
almanac full of dates that are auspicious for various activities
(05:22):
and occasions. The lore around its origins attributes the creation
of the first one to the mythical Yellow Emperor around
twenty six hundred BCE. This is a version of an
almanac that has endured to present day, although the format
of it has evolved a number of times. Yeah, my
understanding is that people will still sometimes consult it to
(05:44):
pick out things like wedding days or other important days
for their family. The compilation, though, of these various types
of information, so combining astronomy, climate, holidays, etc. Into one
source for personal use, is credited to the Arabic speaking world.
The word almanac means climate in Arabic, and according to
(06:08):
the Oxford English Dictionary, the word almanac originates as a
Spanish Arabic word in the Middle Ages, although its specific
point of origin is unknown. This is all a little
bit disputed, though, because it may have been a misinterpretation
or a borrow word that was adopted into European use.
It appears in medieval Latin as almanac with a K,
(06:29):
and it wasn't used in the sense we know it
today definitively until the thirteenth century. That mention is from
twelve seventy six, when English philosopher Roger Bacon published his
book Opus Majus. That year, he suggested that the word
be adopted for use when referring to tables of astronomical information.
One of the reasons there's some fuzziness here is because
(06:51):
the first almanac is usually credited to a man named
Abuashak Ibrahim ibn Yaya al Nakash al to Gb al Zarkali,
who lived and worked on the Iberian Peninsula in the
Muslim ruled region known as al Andalous, so broadly within
Spain today. Al Zarkali was born in ten twenty nine
(07:14):
during the Islamic Golden Age, which just came up in
our episode on the Banu Musa. Al Zarkali was an
astronomer and an astrologer, and in ten eighty eight he
wrote what's now called the Almanac of Zarkali. It's believed
to have been based on a Greek work, but the
information in it regarding astronomical information as local to Toledo,
(07:35):
where al Zarkali lived and worked. The first mass printed
European almanac was the work of Johannes Mueller von Koenigsberg,
better known as Reggiomontans. He was born on June sixth,
fourteen thirty six in Koenigsburg, Germany. Became a well known
and respected mathematician and astronomer, and he was eventually employed
by the Vatican. He also became a printer and he
(07:59):
produced his all E Femeritus Abbano starting in fourteen seventy four.
Although Reggio Montanas died two years later, his almanac continued
until fifteen oh six, twenty three years after the first
of the Reggio Montanas almanacs, France's first almanac was produced.
That was the fourteen ninety three Calendar of Shepherds. This
(08:21):
book became very popular and was soon picked up for
publication in Geneva as well, and then it was translated
badly by all accounts, into Scott's Dialect for publication in
England in fifteen oh three that remained in print in
England continuously until sixteen thirty one. This particular almanac had
(08:41):
the types of things that we mentioned already astronomical tables, seasons,
planting and feast days, plus medical information, poetry and biblical contents.
One of the versions of the Calendar of Shepherds that
was published in England was produced by Richard Pinson. Pinson
was born in France in Normandy, and after he moved
(09:01):
to London, he became one of the city's most prominent printers,
and in his fifteen oh six version of the Calendar
of Shepherds, Pinson wrote that it had been translated into
quote corrupt English and not by no english Man. Pinson
claimed that he had his edition newly translated, although according
to a two thousand and three paper on the Calendar
(09:23):
of Shepherds by Martha W. Driver, none of the English
language versions were direct translations. Some passages were completely different
new information, including one edition that included kind of what
amounted to an illustrated diet and fitness plan allegedly used
by shepherds. Pinson was by the way, appointed Henry the
Ace printer just a few years after his first version
(09:46):
of the Calendar of Shepherds was published in fifteen sixty five.
Joaquim Hubri's An Almanac and Prognostication for the Year of
Our Lord God fifteen sixty five, serving for all Europia
and all so most necessary for all students, merchants, mariners
and travelers both by sea and land, composed and gathered
(10:07):
by Joaquin Hubride, doctor in physic Also the most principal
fairs in England. Very necessary for people that do resort
to the same uh. That's when I came out in
fifteen sixty five. This gives a sense of how much
these had become seen and marketed as repositories of basically
all the vital information a person would need to get
(10:29):
through a given year. Coming up, we're going to talk
about the first almanac that was printed in the British
colonies of North America, but first we will pause for
a sponsor break. The first almanac published in Britain's North
(10:51):
American colonies was published by mariner Captain William Pierce. Pierce
arrived in Boston in sixteen thirty two just two years
after the city founding, and seven years later he produced
his Almanac, which was an almanac for New England for
the year sixteen thirty nine. By this time, almanacs were
becoming recognized as important tools, and in sixteen forty seven
(11:13):
Harvard published an almanac compiled by one of its fellows,
Samuel Danforth. Danforth born in sixteen twenty six was an astronomer, mathematician,
Puritan minister, and a poet, and his almanac reflects these
various disciplines. His first almanac had an essay that played
out throughout the book, at the bottom of each page
or each section, where he shared his thoughts about calendars
(11:37):
and the heavens, and then in subsequent years he abandoned
the essay and instead wrote poems to put at the
end of each month. These are considered secular poems, although
his Puritan religion and morality is ever present in them.
For example, one of his brief June poems reads, who
digged this spring of gardens? Here? Whose mudded streams at
(11:58):
last run clear? Why should we such water drink? Give
loosers what they list to think? Yet no one god,
one faith professed to be new England's interest. Samuel Danforth
also included in his almanac a chronological table of some
few memorable occurrences, which was not a predictive model of
(12:20):
what to expect in the year, but instead a very
brief history of the twenty year old Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Some of these are historically fascinating and the insights that
they offer into dan Forth's views of events that we
see very differently today. For example, in January of sixteen
thirty eight, the only note is quote Missus Hutchinson and
her errors banished. We talked about Ann Hutchinson earlier this
(12:43):
year in our episode on Mary Dyer and her two
trials were involved and had multiple facets, so it's interesting
that dan Forth notes it with just this five words,
very minimal. Most of his history is this way. An
entire years news and events are boiled down to just
a few sentences. Vanforth Almanac was popular and continued for
(13:06):
quite a number of years, although not with him. He
gave the almanac to another person after a few years
when he was offered a pastor position away from Harvard.
During the time that North America was in the early
stages of making print. Almanac's mainstream, there was a very
interesting and different kind of almanac being produced in England.
(13:27):
This type, called a kloague almanac, didn't originate in England.
It had actually been in use in Scandinavian countries for
a long time before it had this surge in popularity
in England. So a cloague almanac is a wooden rod
that's squared so that it has four distinct sides, and
each side represents a quarter of the year, with the
days marked by notches along the edge, so when it's
(13:49):
held by the handle, it's red from the bottom to
the top. And then there are runes and other symbols
that are carved into the cloague at points on each
face of the rod to notate the various happenings in
the season, in the year. And these were obviously not paper.
They were something that would last, and they were meant
to be used for more than one year, so they
didn't reflect projections of a coming year, but more like
(14:12):
here are the standard patterns you can expect, and they
served both a practical and sometimes decorative purpose. Is they
were also sometimes designed to be hung or otherwise displayed
in the home. I'm imagining this as kind of a
calendar yardstick. It's much shorter than that, though, it's like
a thing you can easily hold in your hand. There
(14:32):
are examples of them in museums, and they're like less
than a foot long. They're not that big. Okay, to
move on. Samuel Atkins prepared an almanac for sixteen eighty
six titled Calendarium Pennsylvanians or America's Messenger, being an almanac
for the year of Grace sixteen eighty six, where it
has contained both the English and foreign account the motions
(14:54):
of the planets through the signs, with the luminaries, conjunctions, aspects, eclipses,
the ride, southing and setting of the moon, with the
time when she passeth by or is with the most
eminent fixed stars, sun rising and setting in the time
of high water at the city of Philadelphia, et cetera.
With chronologies and many other notes, rules and tables, very
(15:16):
fitting for every man to know and have, all which
is accommodated to the longitude of province of Pennsylvania and
latitude of forty degrees north, with a table of houses
for the same which may indifferently serve New England, New
York East, and West Jersey, Maryland, and most parts of Virginia.
This is a good indicator that almanacs were also becoming
(15:39):
more and more localized, and they just wanted you to
know that everything's in here, you guys. In seventeen hundred,
Vaux Stellarum the Voice of the Stars was published in
England by Stationers Company. And this was an almanac written
by Francis Moore, who was an astrologer, so it had
a lot of astrology in it. It came to be
(16:00):
known as Old Moore's Almanac, and that is still in publication. It,
like many other almanacs, started to include more and more
different kinds of material, including things like humor and short
form fiction and medical advice, et cetera, making it not
only a reference book but also a source of entertainment.
I think this is sort of what like the Old
Farmer's Almanac also eventually yes into, which is I think
(16:26):
the thing that people might have seen the most around
in the United States today. Following the popularity of Vox Stillarum,
there was a massive surge in the number of almanac
titles in North America. The seventeen twenties and thirties were
the time when several popular almanacs began publication. This included
(16:47):
the Astronomical Diary in Almanac, which started in seventeen twenty
five by a Massachusetts teenager named Nathaniel Ames. Nathaniel went
on to become a physician, but he was only seventeen
when he first produced his almanac, and that continued for
fifty years. After Nathaniel died in seventeen sixty four, his
son continued to publish the work for another decade. Yeah,
(17:09):
apparently when Nathaniel died there was this slight panic in
the family because it was such a popular thing and
a source of income that they saw other publishers kind
of like thinking they would move in and claim that
they were the new Nathaniel Ames Almanac, and his son
was like, I'm just going to take this over. James
(17:30):
Franklin put out the Rhode Island Almanac in seventeen twenty eight,
five years before his more famous brother Benjamin started his
own almanac under the pen name Richard Saunders. Poor Richard's Almanac,
of course, became very successful, and it sold consistently for
more than twenty five years, offering Franklin a platform to
share his thoughts on a wide array of subjects, plenty
(17:51):
of which is really cringey by today's standards. But Ben
Franklin not only jumped into a very crowded market with
his almanac, he was really successful, and he was one
of the few that managed to keep publication going through
the Revolutionary War and beyond. Franklin met the demands of
his audience to do so through things like adding some
(18:12):
blank pages. We're going to talk a little bit more
about that in a minute, or introducing small editions that
were marketed to women and were described as being able
to easily fit into a woman's handbag. The first nautical almanac,
which was Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, was released in
seventeen sixty six. This ties into another old episode of
(18:34):
ours from twenty fourteen on the discovery of longitude, because
the information in the almanac, which was published by the
Astronomer Royal of England, enabled determination of longitude using the
calculation of lunar distance. Nautical almanacs have since been published
around the world, and in nineteen twelve the US Congress
voted to share data, meaning in the most immediate sense
(18:56):
that the British Nautical Office formed in eighteen thirty two
and the US Nautical Office formed in eighteen forty nine
could work together to publish consistent information. Yeah, up to
that point they were both putting out almanacs, and sometimes
they weren't saying the same thing. And since those are
nautical and meant to travel, you can't be as localized.
(19:18):
Specialized almanacs also started to appear. Just as today there
are calendars for cat lovers or fans of specific movies
or TV shows, there were almanacs that aimed at specific demographics,
like religious or social club affiliations. Some almanacs were also
used as a way to promote ideas. The American Anti
Slavery Almanac ran from eighteen thirty six to eighteen forty
(19:41):
three as a way for the American Anti Slavery Society
to show people the realities of slavery. That almanac included
the calendar and statistical information that other almanacs did, but
it also included writing and imagery to convince more people
to join the abolitionist movement, including illustrations of black people,
(20:01):
both enslaved and free, being tortured or being poorly treated.
And this was apparently quite shocking to some readers. Notable
anti slavery activists were involved in this almanacs editing and
publication over the years, including William Lloyd Garrison and Lydia
Mariah Child. Okay, so how does this translate into day planners?
We'll talk about that after we hear from the sponsors
(20:24):
that keep things running here at Stuff You Muss and
History Class. Even before there was anything labeled as a planner,
there were planners. Most people were using their almanacs this way,
often noting down important happenings in their lives or business
(20:47):
dealings on the pages of the copy they were already
carrying around with them, because yes, people carried them around
with them. As almanacs became indispensable to daily life, they
just were the most obvious place to jot things down.
In addition to people just starting to write in the
margins of their almanac's, booksellers and publishers started to address
the demand for writing space and almanacs by including blank pages.
(21:11):
Sometimes these would be bound in right along with the content,
and then other times tipped in after the book had
been assembled. Earlier, we mentioned Joaquin Hubris and Almanac and
Prognostication for the year fifteen sixty five, but that was
not his only almanac. He also created one that he
called Blank and Perpetual that was intended to give users
(21:32):
a place to write down things like transactions that they
wanted to track or other events worth noting throughout the year.
Some other almanacs started to include blank space in the
form of a free column included in the tables, or
even whole blank pages, but all at the end of
the book, so blank areas that were undefined to be
used at the owner's discretion. Molly McCarthy notes in her
(21:54):
twenty thirteen book The Accidental Diarist that the rise in
popularity of diary keeping in the eighteen hundreds has roots
in the almanacs of the eighteenth century. Writing quote, the
commercial success of the pocket diary in the nineteenth century
had much to do with the genres and record keeping
habits that preceded it. The almanac paved the way for
(22:15):
the daily planner. It accustomed buyers to a kind of
writing that was regular but abbreviated, coded in a way
that was restrictive but instrumental to a way of seeing
and being in the world. Pre made diaries one of
a variety of other blank books. Such as scrapbooks, account books,
and autograph albums fueled a publishing industry that betrayed a
(22:36):
commercial fervor for cheap print that began in the colonial
print shop. So the idea of an almanac diary just
brief notes on the day kept in an almanac was different,
of course from a diary where a person might share
their feelings in secrets, but it followed the form of
the almanac, so it just listed facts and events as
a sort of record. There's also this secondary aspect guarding
(23:00):
diary keeping and almanacs that's linked to economic class that
was in play historically. So when it was common for
people to start using their almanacs as diaries, people with
more money could pay to have extra blank pages tipped in.
So even putting one's thoughts on paper in any kind
of expansive way became something of a luxury. If you
(23:20):
only have a brief column and you can't afford more
paper to be added, you got to keep things brief.
Over time, though, both demand for more notation space and
a drop in the reputation of the almanac led to
the various facts, tables and title information being supplanted by
more blank pages until Finally, somebody had the thought to
(23:41):
produce a calendar that was intended primarily for writing in
was a date book. In seventeen forty eight, Robert Dodsley
of London printed a new memoranda book for the following year.
This is a small book that had space for financial
transactions as well as appointments and notes, and it became
very popular in England, so much so that other publishers
(24:03):
started producing them, and then one publisher got the idea
that someone should sell them in North America, and that
person was publisher Robert Aitken. Aitkin was born in Scotland
in seventeen thirty four and emigrated to the Colonies around
seventeen seventy. I saw different years for this. From seventeen
sixty nine to seventeen seventy one he set up a
(24:24):
printing shop in Philadelphia, and just a few years after
he got there he produced the complete annual account book
and calendar for the Pocket or Desk for seventeen seventy three.
This date book wasn't completely devoid of some of the
tables found in almanacs. It had those, but it was secondary.
It really just had a lot more blank pages. Fifty
(24:44):
two of them, so one spread for each week, and
they were laid out in a way that the user
could easily scan the whole week, so it was easy
to write down things like appointments and then reference them
again later. That was something that was less fluid and
smooth if you were writing appointment on a page that
shared space with things like planetary movements, the moon phases,
and weather predictions. On the left page of a two
(25:07):
page spread for the week, there was a grid laid
out to note expenses and income, and then on the
right hand side it had dated cells to write whatever
was pertinent to any given day. It sounds revolutionary and
it was, except not many people were into it. It
was such a departure from the way people had been
accustomed to noting their days that they needed to have
(25:29):
it explained to them that explanation was included in the book.
People were just not really ready for the idea of
writing down things that were going to happen in the future.
They were accustomed to and content with, noting what had
already happened on a given day. If they did want
to record more thoughts, they tended to keep those in
a separate, dedicated diary that wasn't tied to any kind
(25:52):
of calendar. Plus, all those blank pages made Aitken's annual
hard to carry around, even though it was still relatively small.
When Akin published a follow up book in seventeen seventy four,
he made it an almanac, not a date book, with
just a few blank pages, and then he ultimately dropped
those as well, although he continued working as a publisher. Yeah,
(26:13):
he kind of gave up on the whole almanac date
book thing. But obviously, date books with formats very similar
to Aitkins were eventually adopted in the US. By the
second decade of the nineteenth century, their popularity in Great
Britain had finally kind of worked its way over to
North America. If Eitkin had lived twenty years past his
death in eighteen oh two, he would have seen the
(26:34):
surge and popularity of those books. They became almost a
little bit of a fad, and then people quickly realized
the benefit of having a record and planner close at hand.
How this fad popped up is difficult to track, but
one contributor was really just a simple matter of materials.
Paper had become more readily available, so printers could print
(26:56):
more different products and charge less, meaning they were there
was a greater chance that those products would find customers.
During the US Civil War, date books were issued to
Union soldiers, and once the war ended, pocket planners became
even more popular. They spread from metropolitan areas to less
densely populated towns. These also started to reflect a shift
(27:19):
in the way people lived, as they had columns for
bill due dates, spaces for addresses of friends and acquaintances
and appointments, as well as notes. But what wasn't there
was all the almanac data, as that part had shrunk
out of the pages. The popularity of the date book
had increased. The date book became so popular that by
(27:40):
the end of the nineteenth century, Montgomery Ward introduced a
product called the Standard Diary, which was meant to offer
anyone the chance to fully account for their time and finances.
This rise in popularity of date books, which were called
everything from diaries to pocketbooks too, still sometimes almanacs et cetera,
(28:02):
had this questionable effect that we are all still grappling
with today. Right planner consumers started to consider how to
make the most of their time because they started to
think about time differently. When your time is noted in
the margins of something like an almanac and how your
day played out. It may seem a little bit secondary
to a larger picture, but when it's the focus of
(28:23):
an entire blank book, you are almost certain to think
about it with more gravity, and it changed the way
that people thought about their days and about themselves. As
the twentieth century began, date books once again evolved, as
they had become so integral to daily life that branded versions,
which were essentially advertisement vehicles, started to pop up. Department
(28:46):
stores would give away free planners that had ads throughout
their pages, just as almanacs had included everything from patent
medicine ads to calls for abolition. Planners with marketing also
became common, and of course, the twentieth century also saw
wide diversification of planners. Today, design variations abound, from what's
(29:06):
featured on the cover to how planning is managed within
the pages. There are general planners, goal setting planners, planners
for specific activities like running or sewing, or even how
many books you read. Business Research Insights reports that in
twenty twenty two, the diaries and planners market was worth
more than a billion dollars. That's a billion with a
b and it's projected to reach almost one point five
(29:28):
billion by twenty thirty one. And this actually shows a
big bounce back from a drop that happened during pandemic lockdown.
And it's interesting because it also shows growth despite digital
options due to people valuing what the report calls a
disciplined lifestyle and a new surge in the popularity of
diary keeping. So things are evolving, but we're just repeating
(29:50):
everything that's come before, so I hope you know we
also I will note this cover primarily like English language
diaries and almanacs. Sure, we'll talk about one little factoid
I came across in my research that I couldn't really
find a lot of information in another language, and we'll
(30:14):
get to that in our behind the scenes, But right
now I have a little listener mail and then we'll
go finish our recovery from our New Year's Eve celebrations.
This is about Masons, which we talked about on our
William Morgan episodes. This is from our listener, Greg who writes, Hi,
Holly and Tracy. I found your podcast on the abduction
(30:36):
of William Morgan fascinating, not only the story itself, but
because my dad was a Mason, and he was always
a bit vague about it. He was a successful small
town businessman and sometime in the nineteen seventies he was
invited to join the Masons. As a kid, I always
wanted to wear his sparkly red fez hat with the
long tassel, which we still have to this day. He
(30:57):
never really told me much about it, except that it
was a social group. Over time, he became an inactive member.
I asked him why he stopped going, and it really
just came down to social circles. He and Mom were
flower lovers. Dad hybridized iris and day lilies, and they
found their participation in flower clubs more fun for them. Okay,
I'm kind of in awe of your dad right now, Greg,
(31:18):
but the Masons were very good to my dad. There
is a rule in the Masonic organization that they will
take care of any Mason who lives long enough to
run out of money. This was the case with my dad,
who lived to be ninety two despite his savings. We
all know the high cost of living and assisted living
drains as savings quickly. That's where the Masons came in
once Dad was out of money. Obviously, not counting his
(31:40):
monthly Social Security benefits. The Masons stepped in and they
paid Dad's expenses until he passed. This was probably six
to eight months worth of expenses. Our family will forever
be grateful to the kindness of Masons. Uh, that's a
great story. I love it attached is it two for one?
It's a picture of Greg's dad and his cat, Priscilla.
Priscilla liked to take rides on my dad's walker. My
(32:01):
parents had three cats, and they knew when it was bedtime.
Dad would call them and they would run in and
beat him to the bed. Once they knew he was asleep,
they would get up and do their nightly kiddy things.
Then they would be bedside at five am for when
Dad woke up. All of my parents' kiddies were the best.
When it was time to move Dad to assisted living,
two of the kiddies found good homes and the third,
his favorite, decided to cross the Rainbow Bridge. I'm sorry
(32:24):
you lost your dad. He sounds amazing. And this is
the cutest picture I've ever seen. It's so funny because
the cat is just like, this is my conveyance now.
I love it so much, and the cat is adorable
and your dad sounds like a wonderful person. If you
would like to write to us make me cry a
little bit, you can do that at History History Podcast
(32:45):
at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on
social media as Missed in History and if you have
not yet subscribed, you can do that on the iHeartRadio
app or anywhere that you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(33:09):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Happy New Year. Yeah,
it's twenty twenty four as we record this, where as
(00:22):
we share this, we're recording in twenty twenty three, to
be honest, but this is a time of year it's
come up for us before where we start to talk
about things like calendars and planners, which are my personal love.
Put me in a planner store and I'm very happy.
And we have talked a little bit about these topics before.
We talked about almanacs a little bit on our episode
(00:43):
on Benjamin Banneker, and we have certainly talked about calendars
before a few times, but one you may remember is
our episode about the French Republican calendar. But I really
found myself wondering specifically about day planners recently because I
was setting up my twenty twenty four to one and
I was getting excited. It has droids on it. We
(01:03):
love it because I still love a physical paper planner.
I know not everyone does, and some people have transitioned
over to digital. But I started to wonder about when
people started using actual planners, and that really means that
we have to talk about almanacs because the two are
kind of tightly linked in how one led to the other.
(01:27):
And so here we are today. If you're making your planner,
I hope this is a good listening material for you
to review the basics and almanac normally contains things like
a calendar, times for the sunrise and sunset, astronomical information, tides, climate, holidays, festivals,
(01:48):
that kind of thing. You can make a comparison of
an almanac being kind of like an analog version of
a smartphone for people living in pre digital times. Of course,
there are still almanacs a day, including some that have
their own web pages, which is a little funny to me.
So everything you might need to know in terms of time, weather, winter, plants,
(02:08):
that was all in the almanac, so folks had a
ready reference to stay informed on those kinds of things.
So the roots of almanacs are found in calendars that
had notations correlated to dates those date back all the
way to ancient Egypt. These calendars were tied very closely
to the activity of the Nile River, as it was
(02:29):
the cornerstone of survival, so the phases of flood, spring,
and low water, which was also the harvest period were
all noted alongside marking the days. In Egyptians of the
time understood the lunar cycle, and they had marked the
idea of twelve cycles in a year, but the three
seasons of the Nile may have really been the more
(02:49):
important markers to their calendar. This is actually a matter
of debate among historians. But the period of flood ran
from fall to midwinter. Spring, which was also called emergence
sometimes when you see people talking about it today, was
from midwinter so like January, to late spring around May,
and then what they called their harvest encompassed summer and
(03:12):
into the autumn. But these weren't fixed dates, because the
movements of the Nile could shift year to year, and
predictions of those shifts would be baked into the calendar,
although that meant that there was a little bit of variability.
On average, the year ended up following three hundred and
sixty five days as we recognize it today, but there
were some that were a little longer and a little shorter.
(03:33):
We don't know exactly when this way of tracking the
year began, but there are rudimentary versions going back to
three thousand BCE. Ancient Greek and Roman calendars also incorporated
culturally important information along with the days and the years,
things like feasts, days that were likely to bring good
fortune or bad. While we don't have surviving examples of
(03:58):
Greek almanacs, they were mentioned specifically by the mathematical commentator
Theon of Alexandria, who lived in the fourth century. He
incidentally was the father of Hypatia. Yeah, I feel like
in doing an episode about calendars and almanacs, we bump
up against so many of our Yeah, it's a two
other things we've talked about. Yeah. So, then the fasti,
(04:19):
which means days, was sort of a Roman list version
of an almanac. Fastidias, for example, translates to lawful days,
and that list indicated what days it was legal to
conduct various kinds of business. Fasti sacri were lists of
sacred days, and Roman religious leaders were responsible for mapping
(04:40):
out the various important times of the years, including religious
festivals and observations. Then, according to the eighteen ninety Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Antiquities, at some point a scribe
is said to have completely broken with tradition and published
the calendar used by the priests of Rome for the
(05:01):
public to see. Sometimes this is described as displaying tablets.
It's very dramatic. And then it was kind of like
time had become democratized in that moment, and this catalyzed
the development of a common calendar that included a more
comprehensive collection of information. The Chinese tung Shing is an
almanac full of dates that are auspicious for various activities
(05:22):
and occasions. The lore around its origins attributes the creation
of the first one to the mythical Yellow Emperor around
twenty six hundred BCE. This is a version of an
almanac that has endured to present day, although the format
of it has evolved a number of times. Yeah, my
understanding is that people will still sometimes consult it to
(05:44):
pick out things like wedding days or other important days
for their family. The compilation, though, of these various types
of information, so combining astronomy, climate, holidays, etc. Into one
source for personal use, is credited to the Arabic speaking world.
The word almanac means climate in Arabic, and according to
(06:08):
the Oxford English Dictionary, the word almanac originates as a
Spanish Arabic word in the Middle Ages, although its specific
point of origin is unknown. This is all a little
bit disputed, though, because it may have been a misinterpretation
or a borrow word that was adopted into European use.
It appears in medieval Latin as almanac with a K,
(06:29):
and it wasn't used in the sense we know it
today definitively until the thirteenth century. That mention is from
twelve seventy six, when English philosopher Roger Bacon published his
book Opus Majus. That year, he suggested that the word
be adopted for use when referring to tables of astronomical information.
One of the reasons there's some fuzziness here is because
(06:51):
the first almanac is usually credited to a man named
Abuashak Ibrahim ibn Yaya al Nakash al to Gb al Zarkali,
who lived and worked on the Iberian Peninsula in the
Muslim ruled region known as al Andalous, so broadly within
Spain today. Al Zarkali was born in ten twenty nine
(07:14):
during the Islamic Golden Age, which just came up in
our episode on the Banu Musa. Al Zarkali was an
astronomer and an astrologer, and in ten eighty eight he
wrote what's now called the Almanac of Zarkali. It's believed
to have been based on a Greek work, but the
information in it regarding astronomical information as local to Toledo,
(07:35):
where al Zarkali lived and worked. The first mass printed
European almanac was the work of Johannes Mueller von Koenigsberg,
better known as Reggiomontans. He was born on June sixth,
fourteen thirty six in Koenigsburg, Germany. Became a well known
and respected mathematician and astronomer, and he was eventually employed
by the Vatican. He also became a printer and he
(07:59):
produced his all E Femeritus Abbano starting in fourteen seventy four.
Although Reggio Montanas died two years later, his almanac continued
until fifteen oh six, twenty three years after the first
of the Reggio Montanas almanacs, France's first almanac was produced.
That was the fourteen ninety three Calendar of Shepherds. This
(08:21):
book became very popular and was soon picked up for
publication in Geneva as well, and then it was translated
badly by all accounts, into Scott's Dialect for publication in
England in fifteen oh three that remained in print in
England continuously until sixteen thirty one. This particular almanac had
(08:41):
the types of things that we mentioned already astronomical tables, seasons,
planting and feast days, plus medical information, poetry and biblical contents.
One of the versions of the Calendar of Shepherds that
was published in England was produced by Richard Pinson. Pinson
was born in France in Normandy, and after he moved
(09:01):
to London, he became one of the city's most prominent printers,
and in his fifteen oh six version of the Calendar
of Shepherds, Pinson wrote that it had been translated into
quote corrupt English and not by no english Man. Pinson
claimed that he had his edition newly translated, although according
to a two thousand and three paper on the Calendar
(09:23):
of Shepherds by Martha W. Driver, none of the English
language versions were direct translations. Some passages were completely different
new information, including one edition that included kind of what
amounted to an illustrated diet and fitness plan allegedly used
by shepherds. Pinson was by the way, appointed Henry the
Ace printer just a few years after his first version
(09:46):
of the Calendar of Shepherds was published in fifteen sixty five.
Joaquim Hubri's An Almanac and Prognostication for the Year of
Our Lord God fifteen sixty five, serving for all Europia
and all so most necessary for all students, merchants, mariners
and travelers both by sea and land, composed and gathered
(10:07):
by Joaquin Hubride, doctor in physic Also the most principal
fairs in England. Very necessary for people that do resort
to the same uh. That's when I came out in
fifteen sixty five. This gives a sense of how much
these had become seen and marketed as repositories of basically
all the vital information a person would need to get
(10:29):
through a given year. Coming up, we're going to talk
about the first almanac that was printed in the British
colonies of North America, but first we will pause for
a sponsor break. The first almanac published in Britain's North
(10:51):
American colonies was published by mariner Captain William Pierce. Pierce
arrived in Boston in sixteen thirty two just two years
after the city founding, and seven years later he produced
his Almanac, which was an almanac for New England for
the year sixteen thirty nine. By this time, almanacs were
becoming recognized as important tools, and in sixteen forty seven
(11:13):
Harvard published an almanac compiled by one of its fellows,
Samuel Danforth. Danforth born in sixteen twenty six was an astronomer, mathematician,
Puritan minister, and a poet, and his almanac reflects these
various disciplines. His first almanac had an essay that played
out throughout the book, at the bottom of each page
or each section, where he shared his thoughts about calendars
(11:37):
and the heavens, and then in subsequent years he abandoned
the essay and instead wrote poems to put at the
end of each month. These are considered secular poems, although
his Puritan religion and morality is ever present in them.
For example, one of his brief June poems reads, who
digged this spring of gardens? Here? Whose mudded streams at
(11:58):
last run clear? Why should we such water drink? Give
loosers what they list to think? Yet no one god,
one faith professed to be new England's interest. Samuel Danforth
also included in his almanac a chronological table of some
few memorable occurrences, which was not a predictive model of
(12:20):
what to expect in the year, but instead a very
brief history of the twenty year old Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Some of these are historically fascinating and the insights that
they offer into dan Forth's views of events that we
see very differently today. For example, in January of sixteen
thirty eight, the only note is quote Missus Hutchinson and
her errors banished. We talked about Ann Hutchinson earlier this
(12:43):
year in our episode on Mary Dyer and her two
trials were involved and had multiple facets, so it's interesting
that dan Forth notes it with just this five words,
very minimal. Most of his history is this way. An
entire years news and events are boiled down to just
a few sentences. Vanforth Almanac was popular and continued for
(13:06):
quite a number of years, although not with him. He
gave the almanac to another person after a few years
when he was offered a pastor position away from Harvard.
During the time that North America was in the early
stages of making print. Almanac's mainstream, there was a very
interesting and different kind of almanac being produced in England.
(13:27):
This type, called a kloague almanac, didn't originate in England.
It had actually been in use in Scandinavian countries for
a long time before it had this surge in popularity
in England. So a cloague almanac is a wooden rod
that's squared so that it has four distinct sides, and
each side represents a quarter of the year, with the
days marked by notches along the edge, so when it's
(13:49):
held by the handle, it's red from the bottom to
the top. And then there are runes and other symbols
that are carved into the cloague at points on each
face of the rod to notate the various happenings in
the season, in the year. And these were obviously not paper.
They were something that would last, and they were meant
to be used for more than one year, so they
didn't reflect projections of a coming year, but more like
(14:12):
here are the standard patterns you can expect, and they
served both a practical and sometimes decorative purpose. Is they
were also sometimes designed to be hung or otherwise displayed
in the home. I'm imagining this as kind of a
calendar yardstick. It's much shorter than that, though, it's like
a thing you can easily hold in your hand. There
(14:32):
are examples of them in museums, and they're like less
than a foot long. They're not that big. Okay, to
move on. Samuel Atkins prepared an almanac for sixteen eighty
six titled Calendarium Pennsylvanians or America's Messenger, being an almanac
for the year of Grace sixteen eighty six, where it
has contained both the English and foreign account the motions
(14:54):
of the planets through the signs, with the luminaries, conjunctions, aspects, eclipses,
the ride, southing and setting of the moon, with the
time when she passeth by or is with the most
eminent fixed stars, sun rising and setting in the time
of high water at the city of Philadelphia, et cetera.
With chronologies and many other notes, rules and tables, very
(15:16):
fitting for every man to know and have, all which
is accommodated to the longitude of province of Pennsylvania and
latitude of forty degrees north, with a table of houses
for the same which may indifferently serve New England, New
York East, and West Jersey, Maryland, and most parts of Virginia.
This is a good indicator that almanacs were also becoming
(15:39):
more and more localized, and they just wanted you to
know that everything's in here, you guys. In seventeen hundred,
Vaux Stellarum the Voice of the Stars was published in
England by Stationers Company. And this was an almanac written
by Francis Moore, who was an astrologer, so it had
a lot of astrology in it. It came to be
(16:00):
known as Old Moore's Almanac, and that is still in publication. It,
like many other almanacs, started to include more and more
different kinds of material, including things like humor and short
form fiction and medical advice, et cetera, making it not
only a reference book but also a source of entertainment.
I think this is sort of what like the Old
Farmer's Almanac also eventually yes into, which is I think
(16:26):
the thing that people might have seen the most around
in the United States today. Following the popularity of Vox Stillarum,
there was a massive surge in the number of almanac
titles in North America. The seventeen twenties and thirties were
the time when several popular almanacs began publication. This included
(16:47):
the Astronomical Diary in Almanac, which started in seventeen twenty
five by a Massachusetts teenager named Nathaniel Ames. Nathaniel went
on to become a physician, but he was only seventeen
when he first produced his almanac, and that continued for
fifty years. After Nathaniel died in seventeen sixty four, his
son continued to publish the work for another decade. Yeah,
(17:09):
apparently when Nathaniel died there was this slight panic in
the family because it was such a popular thing and
a source of income that they saw other publishers kind
of like thinking they would move in and claim that
they were the new Nathaniel Ames Almanac, and his son
was like, I'm just going to take this over. James
(17:30):
Franklin put out the Rhode Island Almanac in seventeen twenty eight,
five years before his more famous brother Benjamin started his
own almanac under the pen name Richard Saunders. Poor Richard's Almanac,
of course, became very successful, and it sold consistently for
more than twenty five years, offering Franklin a platform to
share his thoughts on a wide array of subjects, plenty
(17:51):
of which is really cringey by today's standards. But Ben
Franklin not only jumped into a very crowded market with
his almanac, he was really successful, and he was one
of the few that managed to keep publication going through
the Revolutionary War and beyond. Franklin met the demands of
his audience to do so through things like adding some
(18:12):
blank pages. We're going to talk a little bit more
about that in a minute, or introducing small editions that
were marketed to women and were described as being able
to easily fit into a woman's handbag. The first nautical almanac,
which was Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, was released in
seventeen sixty six. This ties into another old episode of
(18:34):
ours from twenty fourteen on the discovery of longitude, because
the information in the almanac, which was published by the
Astronomer Royal of England, enabled determination of longitude using the
calculation of lunar distance. Nautical almanacs have since been published
around the world, and in nineteen twelve the US Congress
voted to share data, meaning in the most immediate sense
(18:56):
that the British Nautical Office formed in eighteen thirty two
and the US Nautical Office formed in eighteen forty nine
could work together to publish consistent information. Yeah, up to
that point they were both putting out almanacs, and sometimes
they weren't saying the same thing. And since those are
nautical and meant to travel, you can't be as localized.
(19:18):
Specialized almanacs also started to appear. Just as today there
are calendars for cat lovers or fans of specific movies
or TV shows, there were almanacs that aimed at specific demographics,
like religious or social club affiliations. Some almanacs were also
used as a way to promote ideas. The American Anti
Slavery Almanac ran from eighteen thirty six to eighteen forty
(19:41):
three as a way for the American Anti Slavery Society
to show people the realities of slavery. That almanac included
the calendar and statistical information that other almanacs did, but
it also included writing and imagery to convince more people
to join the abolitionist movement, including illustrations of black people,
(20:01):
both enslaved and free, being tortured or being poorly treated.
And this was apparently quite shocking to some readers. Notable
anti slavery activists were involved in this almanacs editing and
publication over the years, including William Lloyd Garrison and Lydia
Mariah Child. Okay, so how does this translate into day planners?
We'll talk about that after we hear from the sponsors
(20:24):
that keep things running here at Stuff You Muss and
History Class. Even before there was anything labeled as a planner,
there were planners. Most people were using their almanacs this way,
often noting down important happenings in their lives or business
(20:47):
dealings on the pages of the copy they were already
carrying around with them, because yes, people carried them around
with them. As almanacs became indispensable to daily life, they
just were the most obvious place to jot things down.
In addition to people just starting to write in the
margins of their almanac's, booksellers and publishers started to address
the demand for writing space and almanacs by including blank pages.
(21:11):
Sometimes these would be bound in right along with the content,
and then other times tipped in after the book had
been assembled. Earlier, we mentioned Joaquin Hubris and Almanac and
Prognostication for the year fifteen sixty five, but that was
not his only almanac. He also created one that he
called Blank and Perpetual that was intended to give users
(21:32):
a place to write down things like transactions that they
wanted to track or other events worth noting throughout the year.
Some other almanacs started to include blank space in the
form of a free column included in the tables, or
even whole blank pages, but all at the end of
the book, so blank areas that were undefined to be
used at the owner's discretion. Molly McCarthy notes in her
(21:54):
twenty thirteen book The Accidental Diarist that the rise in
popularity of diary keeping in the eighteen hundreds has roots
in the almanacs of the eighteenth century. Writing quote, the
commercial success of the pocket diary in the nineteenth century
had much to do with the genres and record keeping
habits that preceded it. The almanac paved the way for
(22:15):
the daily planner. It accustomed buyers to a kind of
writing that was regular but abbreviated, coded in a way
that was restrictive but instrumental to a way of seeing
and being in the world. Pre made diaries one of
a variety of other blank books. Such as scrapbooks, account books,
and autograph albums fueled a publishing industry that betrayed a
(22:36):
commercial fervor for cheap print that began in the colonial
print shop. So the idea of an almanac diary just
brief notes on the day kept in an almanac was different,
of course from a diary where a person might share
their feelings in secrets, but it followed the form of
the almanac, so it just listed facts and events as
a sort of record. There's also this secondary aspect guarding
(23:00):
diary keeping and almanacs that's linked to economic class that
was in play historically. So when it was common for
people to start using their almanacs as diaries, people with
more money could pay to have extra blank pages tipped in.
So even putting one's thoughts on paper in any kind
of expansive way became something of a luxury. If you
(23:20):
only have a brief column and you can't afford more
paper to be added, you got to keep things brief.
Over time, though, both demand for more notation space and
a drop in the reputation of the almanac led to
the various facts, tables and title information being supplanted by
more blank pages until Finally, somebody had the thought to
(23:41):
produce a calendar that was intended primarily for writing in
was a date book. In seventeen forty eight, Robert Dodsley
of London printed a new memoranda book for the following year.
This is a small book that had space for financial
transactions as well as appointments and notes, and it became
very popular in England, so much so that other publishers
(24:03):
started producing them, and then one publisher got the idea
that someone should sell them in North America, and that
person was publisher Robert Aitken. Aitkin was born in Scotland
in seventeen thirty four and emigrated to the Colonies around
seventeen seventy. I saw different years for this. From seventeen
sixty nine to seventeen seventy one he set up a
(24:24):
printing shop in Philadelphia, and just a few years after
he got there he produced the complete annual account book
and calendar for the Pocket or Desk for seventeen seventy three.
This date book wasn't completely devoid of some of the
tables found in almanacs. It had those, but it was secondary.
It really just had a lot more blank pages. Fifty
(24:44):
two of them, so one spread for each week, and
they were laid out in a way that the user
could easily scan the whole week, so it was easy
to write down things like appointments and then reference them
again later. That was something that was less fluid and
smooth if you were writing appointment on a page that
shared space with things like planetary movements, the moon phases,
and weather predictions. On the left page of a two
(25:07):
page spread for the week, there was a grid laid
out to note expenses and income, and then on the
right hand side it had dated cells to write whatever
was pertinent to any given day. It sounds revolutionary and
it was, except not many people were into it. It
was such a departure from the way people had been
accustomed to noting their days that they needed to have
(25:29):
it explained to them that explanation was included in the book.
People were just not really ready for the idea of
writing down things that were going to happen in the future.
They were accustomed to and content with, noting what had
already happened on a given day. If they did want
to record more thoughts, they tended to keep those in
a separate, dedicated diary that wasn't tied to any kind
(25:52):
of calendar. Plus, all those blank pages made Aitken's annual
hard to carry around, even though it was still relatively small.
When Akin published a follow up book in seventeen seventy four,
he made it an almanac, not a date book, with
just a few blank pages, and then he ultimately dropped
those as well, although he continued working as a publisher. Yeah,
(26:13):
he kind of gave up on the whole almanac date
book thing. But obviously, date books with formats very similar
to Aitkins were eventually adopted in the US. By the
second decade of the nineteenth century, their popularity in Great
Britain had finally kind of worked its way over to
North America. If Eitkin had lived twenty years past his
death in eighteen oh two, he would have seen the
(26:34):
surge and popularity of those books. They became almost a
little bit of a fad, and then people quickly realized
the benefit of having a record and planner close at hand.
How this fad popped up is difficult to track, but
one contributor was really just a simple matter of materials.
Paper had become more readily available, so printers could print
(26:56):
more different products and charge less, meaning they were there
was a greater chance that those products would find customers.
During the US Civil War, date books were issued to
Union soldiers, and once the war ended, pocket planners became
even more popular. They spread from metropolitan areas to less
densely populated towns. These also started to reflect a shift
(27:19):
in the way people lived, as they had columns for
bill due dates, spaces for addresses of friends and acquaintances
and appointments, as well as notes. But what wasn't there
was all the almanac data, as that part had shrunk
out of the pages. The popularity of the date book
had increased. The date book became so popular that by
(27:40):
the end of the nineteenth century, Montgomery Ward introduced a
product called the Standard Diary, which was meant to offer
anyone the chance to fully account for their time and finances.
This rise in popularity of date books, which were called
everything from diaries to pocketbooks too, still sometimes almanacs et cetera,
(28:02):
had this questionable effect that we are all still grappling
with today. Right planner consumers started to consider how to
make the most of their time because they started to
think about time differently. When your time is noted in
the margins of something like an almanac and how your
day played out. It may seem a little bit secondary
to a larger picture, but when it's the focus of
(28:23):
an entire blank book, you are almost certain to think
about it with more gravity, and it changed the way
that people thought about their days and about themselves. As
the twentieth century began, date books once again evolved, as
they had become so integral to daily life that branded versions,
which were essentially advertisement vehicles, started to pop up. Department
(28:46):
stores would give away free planners that had ads throughout
their pages, just as almanacs had included everything from patent
medicine ads to calls for abolition. Planners with marketing also
became common, and of course, the twentieth century also saw
wide diversification of planners. Today, design variations abound, from what's
(29:06):
featured on the cover to how planning is managed within
the pages. There are general planners, goal setting planners, planners
for specific activities like running or sewing, or even how
many books you read. Business Research Insights reports that in
twenty twenty two, the diaries and planners market was worth
more than a billion dollars. That's a billion with a
b and it's projected to reach almost one point five
(29:28):
billion by twenty thirty one. And this actually shows a
big bounce back from a drop that happened during pandemic lockdown.
And it's interesting because it also shows growth despite digital
options due to people valuing what the report calls a
disciplined lifestyle and a new surge in the popularity of
diary keeping. So things are evolving, but we're just repeating
(29:50):
everything that's come before, so I hope you know we
also I will note this cover primarily like English language
diaries and almanacs. Sure, we'll talk about one little factoid
I came across in my research that I couldn't really
find a lot of information in another language, and we'll
(30:14):
get to that in our behind the scenes, But right
now I have a little listener mail and then we'll
go finish our recovery from our New Year's Eve celebrations.
This is about Masons, which we talked about on our
William Morgan episodes. This is from our listener, Greg who writes, Hi,
Holly and Tracy. I found your podcast on the abduction
(30:36):
of William Morgan fascinating, not only the story itself, but
because my dad was a Mason, and he was always
a bit vague about it. He was a successful small
town businessman and sometime in the nineteen seventies he was
invited to join the Masons. As a kid, I always
wanted to wear his sparkly red fez hat with the
long tassel, which we still have to this day. He
(30:57):
never really told me much about it, except that it
was a social group. Over time, he became an inactive member.
I asked him why he stopped going, and it really
just came down to social circles. He and Mom were
flower lovers. Dad hybridized iris and day lilies, and they
found their participation in flower clubs more fun for them. Okay,
I'm kind of in awe of your dad right now, Greg,
(31:18):
but the Masons were very good to my dad. There
is a rule in the Masonic organization that they will
take care of any Mason who lives long enough to
run out of money. This was the case with my dad,
who lived to be ninety two despite his savings. We
all know the high cost of living and assisted living
drains as savings quickly. That's where the Masons came in
once Dad was out of money. Obviously, not counting his
(31:40):
monthly Social Security benefits. The Masons stepped in and they
paid Dad's expenses until he passed. This was probably six
to eight months worth of expenses. Our family will forever
be grateful to the kindness of Masons. Uh, that's a
great story. I love it attached is it two for one?
It's a picture of Greg's dad and his cat, Priscilla.
Priscilla liked to take rides on my dad's walker. My
(32:01):
parents had three cats, and they knew when it was bedtime.
Dad would call them and they would run in and
beat him to the bed. Once they knew he was asleep,
they would get up and do their nightly kiddy things.
Then they would be bedside at five am for when
Dad woke up. All of my parents' kiddies were the best.
When it was time to move Dad to assisted living,
two of the kiddies found good homes and the third,
his favorite, decided to cross the Rainbow Bridge. I'm sorry
(32:24):
you lost your dad. He sounds amazing. And this is
the cutest picture I've ever seen. It's so funny because
the cat is just like, this is my conveyance now.
I love it so much, and the cat is adorable
and your dad sounds like a wonderful person. If you
would like to write to us make me cry a
little bit, you can do that at History History Podcast
(32:45):
at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on
social media as Missed in History and if you have
not yet subscribed, you can do that on the iHeartRadio
app or anywhere that you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(33:09):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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