Retired Midvale Man

Makes the Calendar Last Forever

 

The old saying that if you build it better, the world will beat a path to your door may apply to mousetraps, but a Midvale, Utah man is finding that with calendars it’s bit more tricky.

 

Frank Tidwell has been working on and improving our standard calendar for years now, but it has only been since the first of this year that he feels he has perfected a calendar that will never expire, a calendar system so simple you wonder how such a confusing subject could be made so easy to understand.  In fact, anyone who can read can use the calendar easily with just a couple of minutes of practice, even this reporter.  “I’ve always been interested in calendars,” explained Tidwell, “and I’ve always tried to improve it or invent different versions of it.”

 

Frank has already marketed several calendar items, including a 64-month decal watch calendar that attaches to the crystal, but he says he’s been working on his perpetual calendar for about ten years or so and has just now gotten the bugs out of it.

 

Frank’s calendar consists of a Gregorian schedule chart and seven calendar cards.  To use it, all one has to do is pick any year and find it on the chart.  The years are coded with either blue or black for normal years and red for leap years.  Following along the chart to the far left column a day of the week will tell you which calendar card to use.  The cards are color coded, like the years.  By matching the day, and the color code, you can pick out any of seven hundred and five years, from 1582, when the Gregorian calendar was first made official by Pope Gregory, to 2288.  Additional Gregorian schedule charts can elongate the calendar’s usefulness indefinitely.

 

“About the only thing that can foul it up,” proclaims Tidwell, “is if they do to it, what they’ve done to our system of measurement with the Metric system.  Otherwise, it would never run out.”

 

As difficult as one might find the idea that it could well be the last calendar one would ever need, it is equally surprising to note how compact the calendar is.  The chart folds up and is inserted with the calendar cards in a plastic pouch that fits easily into a pocket, purse, or even a wallet.  Frank has even put together a model that clips into a loose leaf.

 

Along with this, there is a formula for the Julian calendar, which was established by Julius Caesar and preceded the Gregorian calendar.  The Julian calendar goes back to 45 BC.

 

“It seems as though every time I think I’ve got it perfected,” says Frank, “I think of another version of it or another use for it.  When I first got it together, I found out the Leap Years were not being figured right, and I had to go back and redo it.”

 

Now that Frank has gotten the kinks out of his invention, his one remaining problem is getting it into the hands of the public.  Before the world can beat a path, they have to know which door it leads and there has to be enough of whatever has been built better to handle the demand.

 

Although Tidwell’s retirement out of the wholesale business gave him the time to work out the system and copyright it, he is looking for a firm to help him manufacture and market it.

 

“Its uses are so broad that everyone from businessmen to students will find it helpful in their day-to-day activities,” concluded Frank.  “Now that I’m finally getting ready to produce it the way I want, I’m trying to locate someone to help market and promote it.  After all, no invention is any good unless it’s used.”

 

Frank Tidwell’s innovation in calendars is proof that Americans still have the will to create and invent.  If his product is successful, it may also prove, at least in part, that old saying.  It would seem that today, the world still beats paths to the doors of new ideas, even though sometimes it takes a little push to get them started.