Khursheed Fateh's Blog: April 2021

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Manual Generic Calendar - 210410Sa

Manual Generic Calendar

Version: 210410Sa

Other versions
Version	Link
210805Th	Computerized generic calendar - 210805Th

Once upon a time between 3 and 4 decades ago I saw for the first time, entire year's calendar printed on a key chain's metallic holder. On that calendar all months were displayed in a compressed way. That key chain belonged to my younger brother.

Since that time I was wondering how that calendar was working. That calendar was displaying calendar of a particular year and I wanted to make calendar of other years also on the same pattern. So from that time I started to figure out what was the science behind that calendar.

On around the same time I was also trying to know the day-of-week of my birthday. At that time I had no access to any technology which can give me the answer. By chance on one day during that time I got hand on an old news paper of the year 1971. On front page of that news paper full date was printed. This gave me an idea and quickly I started working on that idea.

Idea was to write calendar from that date on news paper day by day backwards to my birthday. So I took one of my register I was using for my rough works and started writing dates day by day in backward direction. Work was really lengthy and required patience and endurance and accuracy. Therefore I was doing that work with more concentration and less hurry. In excitment instead of starting working backwards from year 1971 I started working from the caurrent year of that time which was some year of early 90s.

After writing dates of around 30 years I noticed a pattern emerging out of already written dates. I observed and analyzed that pattern in detail and found that calendar was repeating itself after 28 years and this behavior was creating a pattern out of dates.

That information made me to stop writing dates any further and start analyzing the situation in more detail. After some days I found logic for creating any year’s calendar by doing some calculations. This result took me to my date of birth in almost no time and I found the day-of-week of my birthday relatively very easily.

After getting information about my date of birth I started concentrating on creating a generic calendar which can show any year's calendar after a few simple calculations. I made that calendar using some old card-boards and different colored ballpoints and scale and the logic I found, discovered and/or created during above mentioned work.

Following are some photos of the above mentioned “manual generic calendar” I made using re-cycled materials long time ago for myself.

[Manual Generic Calendar]

From front calendar looks like in this phot.

[Calendar's beta version]

A) I made this for testing a function of calendar. Upper rotateable part is for adjusting day-of-week for given year, This is front view.

This is back view.

B) I made this as prototype of calendar.

[Calendar's First version]

[Calendar's front side]

This is front side of calendar with pre calculated table on left side. The table on left is for adjusting calendar for given year. Date of month in center are adjustable for given year by rotation. On right are months and day of week for them..

This photo displays closeup of calendar's pre calculated table and dates of month. Pre-calculated table is for adjusting dates of month for given year. Date of mont are adjusted by rotating it.