Fun With Numbers
Extract from the original Pirate thing:
MABEL: But you are twenty-one-
FREDERICK: I've just discovered... that I was born in a leap year, and that birthday will not be reached by me 'til Nine Teen Forty *sob*
**
So when are they saying that?
A leap year comes every four years; 4 x 21 (Freddy's age in 1940) = 84; 1940 - 84 = 1856. Freddy was born in 1856. Adding 21 years for his de facto age puts the date at 1877.
Simple, eh? Not so, my friends. The ill-natured fairy has extended her reach into my calculations.
A note on calendars: the Julian (named after a Caesar) calendar considers a calendar year to be 365 1/4 days long. It sets every fourth year as a leap year (as above). The Julian calendar isn't accurate. Eventually, the inaccuracies add up to serious trouble.
The Gregorian (named after a Pope) calendar set out to reform the inaccuracies. It considers a calendar year to be 365 97/400 days, or 365.2425 days. (This still isn't a true year (tropical, equinox to equinox), which is 365.2422 days, or a true year (sidereal), which is a touch longer.)
To keep the calendar jiggered correctly, the Gregorian calendar excepts some leap years from the cycle. Some of these years are: 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200. As you can see, 1900 falls well within our calculations, and its supposed (but not actual) leap year falls well out of them. That means that we need to extend our time frame backwards by four years to make the equations come out.
Freddy was born in 1852. The events in The Pirates of Penzance ocurred in 1873, late February and early March, approximately six and a half years before the first production, staged at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton, Devon on 30th December, 1879.
The Mystery Is Solved.
Unless Freddy forgot about the missing leap year in 1900. He was under a lot of stress: it could happen.
(The theatrical data is from: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~melbear/pirates.htm
The astronomical data comes from Dr Michael Woodhams, PhD in Astrophysics, who'd damn well better have gotten it right.)
MABEL: But you are twenty-one-
FREDERICK: I've just discovered... that I was born in a leap year, and that birthday will not be reached by me 'til Nine Teen Forty *sob*
**
So when are they saying that?
A leap year comes every four years; 4 x 21 (Freddy's age in 1940) = 84; 1940 - 84 = 1856. Freddy was born in 1856. Adding 21 years for his de facto age puts the date at 1877.
Simple, eh? Not so, my friends. The ill-natured fairy has extended her reach into my calculations.
A note on calendars: the Julian (named after a Caesar) calendar considers a calendar year to be 365 1/4 days long. It sets every fourth year as a leap year (as above). The Julian calendar isn't accurate. Eventually, the inaccuracies add up to serious trouble.
The Gregorian (named after a Pope) calendar set out to reform the inaccuracies. It considers a calendar year to be 365 97/400 days, or 365.2425 days. (This still isn't a true year (tropical, equinox to equinox), which is 365.2422 days, or a true year (sidereal), which is a touch longer.)
To keep the calendar jiggered correctly, the Gregorian calendar excepts some leap years from the cycle. Some of these years are: 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200. As you can see, 1900 falls well within our calculations, and its supposed (but not actual) leap year falls well out of them. That means that we need to extend our time frame backwards by four years to make the equations come out.
Freddy was born in 1852. The events in The Pirates of Penzance ocurred in 1873, late February and early March, approximately six and a half years before the first production, staged at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton, Devon on 30th December, 1879.
The Mystery Is Solved.
Unless Freddy forgot about the missing leap year in 1900. He was under a lot of stress: it could happen.
(The theatrical data is from: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~melbear/pirates.htm
The astronomical data comes from Dr Michael Woodhams, PhD in Astrophysics, who'd damn well better have gotten it right.)
posted by theamazingcatherine | 10:42 pm
6 Comments:
[laughs]
I'm sick, yet at the same time, there is something very comforting at the sight of a cat lounging in a pool of sunlight on your bed.
I'm sorry to hear about the sickness. Please don't pass it on to me.
And there's nothing comforting about reading the words of your favourite sister.
Cut to the heart!
"And there's nothing comforting about reading the words of your favourite sister."
Um, what?
Steph: "But reading the dulcet tones of your honeyed prose is like mulled wine on parched ground to balm my agued body, most beloved of all my twin sisters."
Oh, right. What he said. ;-)
You realise that every time I've laughed this past couple of days I've also started coughing. I hope you two are proud of yourself, is all I can say.
I've just read Wikipedia on the tropical year. It turns out there's an additional complication I was unaware of, and yet another year (the "vernal equinox year" (that's a northern hemisphere cultural imperialist name)) which is 365.2424 days, and was probably of more interest to Pope Gregory than the mean tropical year of 365.2422 - so his 365.2425 approximation is pretty good.
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