We investigate the provenance and the changes in the timekeeping system focusing on official records such as almanacs and textbooks published by the government after the solar calendar was introduced. We found that the solar calendar and the 12-hour clock time first appeared in 1884 during Joseon dynasty, at that time the solar calendar was used at the open port in Busan to facilitate the exchanges with Japan. The 12-hour clock time first appeared in the『Hansung Sunbo』published by the government in 1884. We also found that the Joseon dynasty also used 12 diǎnzhōng or 12 diǎn. In addition, the term of the ‘Sigan’ first appeared in the first official academic textbook in August 1895, and the chapter related to time contained the information about 12-hour clock time instead of the 12 Shi. In 1908, the meaning of the solar time, the equation of time, and the differences in longitude with the adoption of Korean Standard Time were introduced. Meanwhile, the 24-hour clock time was first introduced in Joseon and applied to railway times in 1907. The 1946 almanac, the first issue after liberation, used the 12-hour clock time which uses ‘Sango’, ‘Hao’ and the 24-hour clock time started to be used from the following year and is still used to this day. Finally, the 12-hour clock time, which was introduced around 1884, was enacted as Article 44 of the law in 1900 and was revised again in 1905 and 1908. In Korea, the terms related to the time in the current astronomical calendar system were newly defined around 1884, 1896, and 1908, and gradually standardized through the establishment of laws.

It has been considered that 'exhausted eclipses' (日食旣) were total eclipses. However, modern precise calculations show that a significant fraction of such records are not realized to be total. Thus we doubt that the two concepts are equivalent. Here we investigate the meaning of 'exhausted eclipses' in the east-Asian history. We first find that eclipses of magnitude greater than 0.8 were regarded as 'exhausted eclipses' by a Korean astronomer of the 18th-century Choson dynasty. His notion was based upon the definition of 'exhausted eclipses' in the ephemerides of pre-modern Chinese dynasties. According to those ephemerides, the 'exhausted eclipses', whose magnitude is greater than 0.8, have the first contact at the western part of the solar disk and the fourth contact at the eastern part of the solar disk. A simple geometrical calculation shows that such cases really occur when the magnitude of eclipse is greater than 0.7. We pointed out that such an ancient definition might not be impractical for ancient astronomers, because the uncertainty of eclipse magnitude estimated by ancient Chinese ephemerides was 10% and the human sight has a spatial resolution of 1.2 arcmin, which is approximately one twentieth of the Sun's angular diameter.

Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), direct decendant of Korea National Astronomy Observatory, has been publishing Korean Astronomical Almanac since in 1976. The almanac contains essential data in our daily lives such as the times of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset, conversion tables between luni-solar and solar calendars, and so forth. So, we are planning to register Korean astronomical almanac data for national Standard Reference Data(SRD), which is a scientific/technical data whose the reliablity and the accuracy are authorized by scientific analysis and evalution. To be certificated as national SRD, reference data has to satisfy several criteria such as traceability, consistency, uncertainty, and so on. Based on similarity among calculation processes, we classified astronomical almanac data into three groups: Class I, II, and III. We are planning to register them for national SRD in consecutive order. In this study, we analyzed Class I data which is aimed to register in 2009, and presented the results. Firstly, we found that the traceability and the consistency can be ensured by the usage of NASA/JPL DE405 ephemeris and by the comparsion with international data, respectively. To evaluate uncertainty in Class I data, we solved the mathematical model and determined the factors influencing the calculations. As a result, we found that the atmospheric refraction is the main factor and leads to a variation of ±16 seconds in the times of sunrise and sunset. We also briefly review the histories of astronomical almanac data and of standard reference data in Korea.

In this paper, we analyze the scientific inquiries type on Almanac and Historical Astronomy asked through the Q&A service in Korea Astronomy and Science Institute(KASI) webpage with the aid of scientific inquiries analysis methods. We also study the contents of the questions. Specifically, we have created statistics of questions and inquiries, and have developed categories to analyze the characteristics of questions with regard to their cognitive aspects. Each question is categorized as either of the two elements based on their recognitive aspect: science knowledge or science study. Each element also has sub-categories that help the reader understand the characteristics of the questions. For the analysis, we used the sample consisting of questions collected from April, 2005 to June, 2007. Through this study, we achieved a better understanding of the questions in the area of Almanac and Historical Astronomy asked in the Q&A service. Throughout this study, we find that the need of questions in the area of Almanac and Historical Astronomy are increasing with time, and the overall quality of the questions is getting improved. As we expect that the number of people using our Q&A service will increase and that the questions will get more difficult to answer, development of improved contents is required.