A Man Beyond Time
Moses Cotsworth’s fight for the 13-month calendar
In January 1922, Moses Cotsworth packed a leather holdall, said goodbye to his family and began his campaign for a new global calendar. He barely returned home for the next sixteen years as he travelled the world urging governments and businesses to change to his 13-month system.
His one-man crusade to revolutionise time, modernise business and improve workers’ lives consumed his life. He battled to defend the rights of the working class although the fight cost him his financial security, his job at the North Eastern Railway in York, and, when he challenged the British Columbia provincial government, almost his liberty.
His dream of a conference on global calendar reform at the League of Nations compelled him onwards. He studied ancient calendars, measured the Great Pyramid in Egypt, met Indigenous peoples in America and, for a generation, was the world authority on calendar systems. Woolworths, Škoda, American Express and Kodak were just a few of the companies to adopt his 13-month system. He became a close friend of George Eastman, founder of Kodak; supported by him Cotsworth travelled to over 50 countries and brought his new calendar to the verge of world-wide adoption.
Drawing on his previously unpublished personal papers in Britain and Canada, Cotsworth’s first biography reveals the character and determination of this extraordinarily driven man and exposes the sacrifices he made as he clashed with authority.
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