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This text of Robert Wood’s was first issued in 1680 as a broadside, in bilingual format (English and Latin), under the title “A rectified account of time, by a new luni-solar year ....” It was then reformatted as a monograph, and reissued twice more in 1681: printed first in No. 2 of Robert Hooke’s scientific journal, Philosophical Collections, where it was given the new title “A Specimen of a New AL-MON-AC for Ever ...”; then printed again as part of an 18-page folio titled The Times Mended: Or, A Rectified Account of Time, By A New Luni-Solar Year; The True Way To Number our Days, which included a new mathematical demonstration, a 10-page table of 12 columns giving “A Parallel of Days between the Julian and Luni-solar Years,” and a concluding statement answering the “three Objections upon the foregoing Contrivance” (“the emblematical garter”) sent to Wood by “An incomparable person.”

The initial printed broadside is interesting since it shows an early use of a tabloid format for serious, scientific discussion. Wood’s Latin-English broadside, clearly designed for a broad and diverse audience, includes a small table of data, but no illustrations, whereas the journal and folio publications brought out subsequently feature a woodcut engraving of Wood’s “hieroglyphick of the year” (an “emblematical garter,” in the familiar shape of a belt with buckle) along with directions for cutting the paper template out of the publication and turning it into a working almanac (“Turn this rundle under A,” etc.). Wood had submitted his new design for a graphical almanac to the Royal Society on 13 April 1680, and Hooke had been impressed enough to reprint the proposal in full.

Wood’s interest in calendar reform, along with his symbolic rendering of eternity as an “emblematical garter,” had important socio-political overtones. In his accompanying documentation, Wood describes his emblematical garter as “more proper for England” than the then-popular Egyptian “Serpent curv’d into a Circle or Ring, with Tayl in Mouth.” This is because the garter design was “so exactly fitted to the Moon’s motion” that it gives “A Rectified Account of Time, by a Luni-Solar Year”:

That is, By the Moon’s Monthly Course primarily, so as the First of the Month shall always be within about a Day of the Change; and yet adjusted to the Sun’s yearly Course.

Opting “to take the Revolution of the Moon, rather than that of the Sun, for my chief and primary Measure of Time”

... may afford one Argument, by the by, against the old Way, or Year, That like a Finger-Watch, it needs so frequent setting, and must have a New Almanac got every year; whereas one Direction in this Luni-Solar Way may serve for all Ages; and the Garter may be so well buckled once for all, that it may last for ever, as the Moon, &c.

Wood acknowledged that any redesign of the English calendar “must needs answer the ends of Husbandry, and other civil Affairs,” including those of church and state, and he includes a lengthy disquisition on how

both Caesar and the Church might have had much better Copy from Hipparchus: Which mistakes of theirs (and their Eyes being dasl’d with the Sun, whereas they might have looked more safely on the Moon) have occasioned those Anticipations and Differences, that have embarrassed the Accounts of Time, and these Parts of the World in the succeeding Ages.

Furthermore, Wood assures us that his new graphical almanac, with its rectified luni-solar cycles, can serve

as an Expedient for reconciling the West and East Churches.

Indeed, there was precedent for this in the very concept of an al-mon-ac (almanac meaning “calendar of the heavens” in Arabic). While obliquely refering to the Arabic origins of the word with his orthography, Wood introduced an intercultural gloss for the term:

Al-mon-ac. Our Ancestors used to carve the courses of the Moon of the whole Year upon a squared Stick, which they called an Al-mon-agh, that is, Al-moon-heed. Verstegan. p. 58. The Dutch Al-maen-acht imports the same.

In addition to presenting his graphical almanac as steeped in the traditional religious symbolism of East and West, Wood advertises it as “very easie and ready for Practice, either by Memory, Pen, or Clock-work.” And the design was, of course, admirably suited for dedication “to the most Honourable Order of The Garter,” which Wood promptly did with both 1681 publications.

The psychological importance of Garter symbolism for Royalist scientists such as Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, and Elias Ashmole, has been well established by the historian of science, Lisa Jardine. Wood’s emblematical garter adds yet another layer to our understanding of the epistemological force of the Garter metaphor.

A trained mathematician, Wood was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Rota Club man, and a close associate of William Petty. His work on the reformation of English time absorbed many a scientific mind in the latter decades of the 17th-century, including Susan Holder’s husband, William, who published two books on time: Introductio ad chronologiam, sive, Ars chronologica in epitomen redacta (Oxford, 1691), and A discourse concerning time: with application of the natural day and lunar month and solar year as natural, and of such as are derived from them, as artificial parts of time, for measures in civil and common use: for the better understanding of the Julian year and calendar, the first column also in our church-calendar explained, with other incidental remarks (London, 1694).

RELATES TO: Hooke’s theory of the human “notion of Time,” described in the PDF publication, Time, Soul, Memory (LIB. CAT. NO. DTP2003); an IN BRIEF topic on almanacs; an IN BRIEF topic on dials and dialling; the IN BRIEF biographies of William Petty and Susan Holder; the PLAYERS pages on Robert Hooke and Athanasius Kircher; the GALLERY exhibit on Lely’s psychological portraiture, with its discussion of Garter symbolism and Ashmole’s publication in 1672 of The Institution, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, richly illustrated by Wenceslaus Hollar


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Search this site		© August 2005 revised 26 June 2008
	Robert Wood’s A Specimen of a New Al-Mon-Ac for Ever (1681) This text of Robert Wood’s was first issued in 1680 as a broadside, in bilingual format (English and Latin), under the title “A rectified account of time, by a new luni-solar year ....” It was then reformatted as a monograph, and reissued twice more in 1681: printed first in No. 2 of Robert Hooke’s scientific journal, Philosophical Collections, where it was given the new title “A Specimen of a New AL-MON-AC for Ever ...”; then printed again as part of an 18-page folio titled The Times Mended: Or, A Rectified Account of Time, By A New Luni-Solar Year; The True Way To Number our Days, which included a new mathematical demonstration, a 10-page table of 12 columns giving “A Parallel of Days between the Julian and Luni-solar Years,” and a concluding statement answering the “three Objections upon the foregoing Contrivance” (“the emblematical garter”) sent to Wood by “An incomparable person.” The initial printed broadside is interesting since it shows an early use of a tabloid format for serious, scientific discussion. Wood’s Latin-English broadside, clearly designed for a broad and diverse audience, includes a small table of data, but no illustrations, whereas the journal and folio publications brought out subsequently feature a woodcut engraving of Wood’s “hieroglyphick of the year” (an “emblematical garter,” in the familiar shape of a belt with buckle) along with directions for cutting the paper template out of the publication and turning it into a working almanac (“Turn this rundle under A,” etc.). Wood had submitted his new design for a graphical almanac to the Royal Society on 13 April 1680, and Hooke had been impressed enough to reprint the proposal in full. Wood’s interest in calendar reform, along with his symbolic rendering of eternity as an “emblematical garter,” had important socio-political overtones. In his accompanying documentation, Wood describes his emblematical garter as “more proper for England” than the then-popular Egyptian “Serpent curv’d into a Circle or Ring, with Tayl in Mouth.” This is because the garter design was “so exactly fitted to the Moon’s motion” that it gives “A Rectified Account of Time, by a Luni-Solar Year”: That is, By the Moon’s Monthly Course primarily, so as the First of the Month shall always be within about a Day of the Change; and yet adjusted to the Sun’s yearly Course. Opting “to take the Revolution of the Moon, rather than that of the Sun, for my chief and primary Measure of Time” ... may afford one Argument, by the by, against the old Way, or Year, That like a Finger-Watch, it needs so frequent setting, and must have a New Almanac got every year; whereas one Direction in this Luni-Solar Way may serve for all Ages; and the Garter may be so well buckled once for all, that it may last for ever, as the Moon, &c. Wood acknowledged that any redesign of the English calendar “must needs answer the ends of Husbandry, and other civil Affairs,” including those of church and state, and he includes a lengthy disquisition on how both Caesar and the Church might have had much better Copy from Hipparchus: Which mistakes of theirs (and their Eyes being dasl’d with the Sun, whereas they might have looked more safely on the Moon) have occasioned those Anticipations and Differences, that have embarrassed the Accounts of Time, and these Parts of the World in the succeeding Ages. Furthermore, Wood assures us that his new graphical almanac, with its rectified luni-solar cycles, can serve as an Expedient for reconciling the West and East Churches. Indeed, there was precedent for this in the very concept of an al-mon-ac (almanac meaning “calendar of the heavens” in Arabic). While obliquely refering to the Arabic origins of the word with his orthography, Wood introduced an intercultural gloss for the term: Al-mon-ac. Our Ancestors used to carve the courses of the Moon of the whole Year upon a squared Stick, which they called an Al-mon-agh, that is, Al-moon-heed. Verstegan. p. 58. The Dutch Al-maen-acht imports the same. In addition to presenting his graphical almanac as steeped in the traditional religious symbolism of East and West, Wood advertises it as “very easie and ready for Practice, either by Memory, Pen, or Clock-work.” And the design was, of course, admirably suited for dedication “to the most Honourable Order of The Garter,” which Wood promptly did with both 1681 publications. The psychological importance of Garter symbolism for Royalist scientists such as Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, and Elias Ashmole, has been well established by the historian of science, Lisa Jardine. Wood’s emblematical garter adds yet another layer to our understanding of the epistemological force of the Garter metaphor. A trained mathematician, Wood was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Rota Club man, and a close associate of William Petty. His work on the reformation of English time absorbed many a scientific mind in the latter decades of the 17th-century, including Susan Holder’s husband, William, who published two books on time: Introductio ad chronologiam, sive, Ars chronologica in epitomen redacta (Oxford, 1691), and A discourse concerning time: with application of the natural day and lunar month and solar year as natural, and of such as are derived from them, as artificial parts of time, for measures in civil and common use: for the better understanding of the Julian year and calendar, the first column also in our church-calendar explained, with other incidental remarks (London, 1694). RELATES TO: Hooke’s theory of the human “notion of Time,” described in the PDF publication, Time, Soul, Memory (LIB. CAT. NO. DTP2003); an IN BRIEF topic on almanacs; an IN BRIEF topic on dials and dialling; the IN BRIEF biographies of William Petty and Susan Holder; the PLAYERS pages on Robert Hooke and Athanasius Kircher; the GALLERY exhibit on Lely’s psychological portraiture, with its discussion of Garter symbolism and Ashmole’s publication in 1672 of The Institution, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, richly illustrated by Wenceslaus Hollar
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