Owner’s Manual, Human Vehicle.
Dr. Whitten first conceived of the Planetary Calendar-Clock August 27, 2006, in the process of writing and illustrating a book: Owner’s Manual, Human Vehicle, which was privately printed December 2012. At first he called it the ‘Counter Clock’, because the Hour Hand moved in a counter clockwise direction.
The Calendar-Clock is not yet fully realized in Owner’s Manual. As you can see in this illustration, Dr. Whitten had a “Day-Light Provider” fixed in a meridian track at 12 but he still had the background of the stars fixed in his mind, with the Sun moving relative to the fixed stars. (Here you see the Sun is approaching 24.) It wasn’t easy to “fix the Sun at 12,” which requires the background of the stars to rotate relative to the fixed Sun. The fixed orientation of the number dial is what is important with any clock, so that you can tell the time at a glance..
This is another illustration from Owner’s Manual describing the Calendar-Clock Radio, which plays the “Music of the Spheres.”
After completing Owner’s Manual, Dr. Whitten started writing Monadic Space-Time and the Calendar-Clock, which was first published (print on demand by CreateSpace, and now Amazon) February 2014.
Dr. Whitten started working with Jim Rodney, a 3-D designer and animator, February 2014 and the first animation (72 seconds long) was completed April 18, 2014. At this early stage, no effort was made to depict or account for the Earth’s elliptical orbit around the Sun and the effect this has on the Calendar-Band.
Additional improvements were made to the 3-D model over the course of the next year, and a couple of private talks were given explaining the Calendar-Clock. Also around this time Dr Whitten made a series of 6 videos based on these talks, which you can look at here: Introducing the Calendar-Clock.
August 20, 2015, Dr. Whitten completed a 2-D Calendar-Clock prototype, which was interesting but not yet based on an elliptical orbit for the Earth around the Sun. Around this time Dr. Whitten also worked on a Calendar-Clock face for the Apple Watch which is still an intriguing possibility. He also made another series of videos on the Subject of Scientific Astrology.
Dr. Whitten started working out how to account for elliptical orbits in 2016. After many discussions with his father, Wesley, he was able to work out the basic interaction, which is based on Kepler’s second law of planetary motion which describes the speed of a planet traveling in an elliptical orbit around the Sun.
Kepler’s second law states that a line between the Sun and a planet sweeps equal areas in equal times. There are exactly 365.24219 twenty four-hour days in a seasonal year, so if you mark the location of the Earth at each midnight, then you generate a series of Day Blocks, each individually and uniquely sized, that form the Calendar-Band.
After Dr. Whitten figured out how to build a Calendar-Band which is continuously created and consumed at the same time, he was ready to begin programming. He met with Thomas Spellman for the first time, October 14, 2017, and shortly after that they started Stage 1 programming.