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Keeping track of the years is something that has been done for centuries, but it is not as simple as it seems. The Gregorian calendar, which is the international standard, is used for business and daily life, but many non-Western countries also follow a traditional calendar for religious purposes. The Gregorian calendar is solar-based, tracking the seasons, and is considered the most accurate, but it is not the only calendar in use. The Anno Domini era, which is used to number the years of the Gregorian calendar, was invented by Dionysius, and while it is widely used, the numbering system is ultimately arbitrary.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Date of search | 1 April 2025 |
| Current year | 2025 |
| Previous year | 2024 |
| Next year | 2026 |
| Year of widespread AD usage | Early 19th century |
| Calendar type | Gregorian |
| Calendar basis | Astronomical events |
| Calendar purpose | Agricultural |
| Calendar drift | Occurs due to leap days |
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What You'll Learn
The standardisation of time
The first standardised time system was adopted by British railways on December 1, 1847, switching from local mean time to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). This was also known as "railway time" and was gradually adopted across Great Britain, with most public clocks standardised to GMT by 1855. However, it was not compulsory for all railways to use GMT until 1880.
In North America, the process of standardisation was more complex due to the vast size of the continent and the large number of official time zones. Charles Dowd, an educator from Madison, Connecticut, proposed dividing the continent into four vertical time zones, differing by one hour, in 1869. This proposal was not initially adopted, but it sparked a conversation about the need for standardised time. By the 1870s, most railroads in North America had adopted their own time standards, causing confusion for travellers and leading to calls for a uniform system.
Finally, on November 18, 1883, the railroads of North America adopted a standardised system of keeping time using hour-wide time zones. This marked the end of local time and the beginning of a uniform timekeeping system that would eventually be adopted worldwide. The standardisation of time in North America had a significant impact on society, with industrial America, in particular, organising its schedules and work routines around railroad time.
While the 19th century laid the foundation for standardisation, it was the 20th century that saw the widespread adoption of time zones and the solidification of the concept of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. The standard time in each time zone is defined as an offset from Universal Time or Coordinated Universal Time, with further offsets applied for daylight saving time. Today, the world is divided into 24 time zones, each representing one hour and corresponding to the 24 hours in a day.
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The Gregorian calendar
The principal change from the Julian calendar was to space leap years differently, so that the average calendar year is 365.2425 days long, more closely approximating the 365.2422-day "tropical" or "solar" year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun. The rule for leap years is that every year divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are divisible by 100, except in turn for years also divisible by 400. For example, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, but 2000 was.
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The Julian calendar
The ordinary (non-leap year) lengths of all the months in the Julian calendar are the same as those in the modern-day Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar's predecessor, the Roman calendar, was a complicated lunar calendar based on the moon's phases. It required a group of people to decide when days should be added or removed to keep the calendar in sync with the astronomical seasons, marked by equinoxes and solstices.
Over time, the Julian calendar gradually drifted away from the solar year due to a miscalculation of the year's length. This led to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, which corrected the discrepancy. However, the Julian calendar is still used as a religious calendar by some Eastern Orthodox churches and the Amazigh (Berber) people in North Africa.
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The meaning of AD
The Gregorian calendar, which is the international standard, is based on the supposed birth date of Jesus Christ. The years that follow this event are counted up and accompanied by either AD or CE, while the years before it are counted down and accompanied by either BC or BCE.
AD stands for Anno Domini, a Latin phrase that means "in the year of the Lord". The idea to count years from the birth of Jesus Christ was first proposed in the year 525 by Dionysius Exiguus, a Christian monk. The system was standardised under the Julian and Gregorian calendars and spread throughout Europe and the Christian world in the centuries that followed.
In strict usage, AD is only employed with specific years. For example, "he died in 1621 AD" but "he died in the 17th century" (not the "17th century AD"). The abbreviation "AD" is also widely used after the number of a century or millennium, as in "fourth century AD" or "second millennium AD".
The use of "AD" and "BC" has been criticised for being religiously biased. Since the Gregorian calendar is used internationally, members of non-Christian groups may object to the explicitly Christian origins of BC and AD. The abbreviations BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) are often used instead to avoid religious connotations. However, others argue that BCE/CE is less religiously inclusive than BC/AD because it elevates the importance of Christ's birth as the start of an entirely new "common era".
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The invention of the Anno Domini era
The last year of the old table, Diocletian Anno Martyrium 247, was immediately followed by the first year of Dionysius' table, Anno Domini 532. When devising his table, Dionysius stated that the "present year" was "the consulship of Probus Junior", which was 525 years "since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ". Thus, he implied that Jesus' incarnation occurred 525 years earlier, without stating the specific year of his birth or conception.
The Anglo-Saxon historian Bede, who was familiar with the work of Dionysius, used the Anno Domini dating system in his "Ecclesiastical History of the English People", completed in AD 731. Bede also used the Latin phrase "ante [...] incarnationis dominicae tempus anno sexagesimo" ("in the sixtieth year before the time of the Lord's incarnation"), equivalent to the English "before Christ", to identify years before the first year of this era. Both Dionysius and Bede regarded Anno Domini as beginning at the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
The Anno Domini dating system became widely adopted in Western Europe during the eleventh century and remains in use globally today, even outside of Christian communities. Its success is partly due to Western colonial expansion and dominance. Over time, the terms "Before Common Era" (BCE) and Common Era" (CE) have been used by some to strip the religious connotations from the original BC and AD terminology.
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