John Gruber and His Famous Almanack Part 6

rom 1797 until 1965, the size of The Almanack remained the same familiar quarto size instituted by the founder, but in 1966 a slightly smaller more convenient-to-handle format was introduced. Whereas the original publication ran to twenty-nine pages, over the years it has grown to 64 pages. It was further expanded to 80 pages in 2011 and then to 84 pages in 2012.

On the inside, very little has changed from the explanation of the constellation characters and astronomical signs, which still appears on the inside front cover, to the frontispiece containing much of the original language of the first edition. The monthly calculation pages are identical to those that appeared in 1797 except that they are in English.

The Almanack continued to feature the monthly calendar pages containing a listing of "Remarkable Days," place and age and other pertinent astronomical information such as "Aspects of the Planets" and the times for sunrise and sunset, all of which were important to farmers and rural folk. The publication also listed the Phases of the Moon and monthly conjecture of the weather. Remarkable events in our nation's history, philosophical considerations of mankind's problems and informative articles offering solutions and suggestions for various preparations to help in the running of the farm and household and its maintenance and repair were also noted.

The now familiar quotations that close out the bottom of the monthly calendar pages made occasional appearances during the early years but were not included under each of the twelve months and on the back cover on any regular basis until the 1944 issue.

In 1836 the almanac appeared with a set of woodcuts depicting activities of the farm for every month in the year. These have never been changed. Even the back cover has seen very little change since the introduction of The Long Multiplication Table, an invention of Mr. Gruber's, which first appeared as early as the 1841 issue. Many generations have cut their mathematical eyeteeth on this tree of numbers, as they will continue to do so in the future.

The Almanack’s weather predictions, with a high degree of accuracy, have come to be main reason for our popularity. As a regional publication, readers could count on dead-on forecasts that were, at times, even more accurate then ones from Old Farmer’s and the National Weather Service. One amusing anecdote comes to mind regarding the weather forecast for the inauguration of President Taft in 1909. While all the other forecasters predicted fair weather for that date, The Almanack's expert called for "Rough Weather"; The Almanack won by a blizzard. We have even predicted snow on Easter in 1924, and, sure enough, there were hailstones the size of walnuts!  The story about our predicting snow for the Fourth of July one year and its actually snowing has so far proved apocryphal, but we're still digging back into the records for verification as of this publication date.

In 1962, local Hagerstown practical nurse, Lydia Kline (fondly referred to as "Aunt Lydia”), began offering prospective parents with remarkable accuracy, what the gender of their expected offspring would most likely be. This ‘service was based upon past astrological signs and was frequently requested for a number of years until medicine’s advances and the use of ultrasound were actually able to show on a screen an image of the unborn child, thus removing any doubt as to whether it would be a boy or a girl. . And so Aunt Lydia gave way to progress and was discontinued. However, ‘she’ and her services were  brought back due to popular demand and has been appearing in every issue since 1999.

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