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History Department

xkcd 2086

When we take into account the recent discovery of previously-unstudied history in the 1750s, this year may have been an outright loss.

Explanation ➲

In this comic Ponytail is a representative of the history department, which might be a department of a university or other organisation. She presents the year report of 2018. In this, she explains, the department has fully analyzed over four months of history. In the meantime, due to the passage of time, another year of history has been added to their workload (implied to be the year spanning between the current meeting and the previous one).[citation needed] This presents a cycle in which the department would only be able to keep up if they could analyze, within a one year period, at least one year of history.

A department in a business, such as the finance department, is typically required to keep up with their own workload and complete an entire year's worth of workload every year. A business that fails to manage this minimum would almost certainly fail: bills would not get collected, invoices would not get paid, employees would not get paid, etc. A history department fails to follow this model in two very important ways. First, the subject of history cannot be fully processed. New discoveries change what we know about certain time periods. Even current events cannot be fully processed, as future events will cause historians to see connections in things not previously thought to be connected. Second, the standard model for history departments focuses on specific eras or specific subjects for the purpose of explaining the events to students. History departments do not process years, but instead process the subject so that it stays relevant to the understanding of the current student body.

There are, however, long running historical projects that have suffered this very problem. An example is the Histoire littéraire de la France which began publication in 1733 with a volume covering up to the year 300. By 1995 over 40 volumes had been published, but the historical account had only reached the 14th century. The volumes for the 14th century had taken 130 years to produce. Although over the 250 years of the project publication had been proceeding faster than time elapsed, the proliferation of literary content following the dawn of printing in the 15th century is likely to cause the project to slip further into reverse.

The title text further expands this problem by indicating the discovery of a new era of history that had previously gone un-analyzed, which would have added more undiscovered history than it removed. The 1750s decade is possibly a reference to the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by the British Empire.

Randall previously mentioned that history is huge in 1979: History.

Events in the dates listed:

  • May 21-25, 585 BCE: Possibly a reference to the solar eclipse that actually happened May 28, 585 BCE, or to the war between King Alyattes of Lydia and King Cyaxares of Media that ended after said solar eclipse.
  • June-August 1848: