I’m planning to write ashort JavaScript library which could be used to calculate a Barsoomian date. You should also be able to convert an Earth date into a Barsoomian date. But I have discovered one problem.
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What should I do?
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There are two minor mistakes in CRB p.5
A real life Mars day is 24 hours 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds long. A padan however is 24 hours, 43 minutes and 20 seconds long, if a tal is 0.89 seconds long. That are nearly 4 minutes too many!
A real life Mars year is 668.5991 Mars days long. An ord however is 670 padans long. This is also too much.
The problem with the length of a padan can be solved by reducing a tal to 0.88775 seconds.
The problem with the length of an ord could be saved by rducing the last teean of an ord to 66 padans and to introduce a leap year every couple of ords in which the last teean is only 65 padans long. The real life Mars calender implies indirektly that here had only been one leap year since Mars year 1 (beginning on 11 April 1955).
One suggestion for the names of the Barsoomian ‘months’:
Rateean, Coteean, Jateean, Bateean, Sateean, etc.
I would be really interested to see this. Something I would be curious to know is if the timeline of Barsoom could be adjusted for this. Because for my Barsoom timeline I have Barsoom being hundreds of millions if not billions of years older. Basically I have H.G. Wells type martians that live far beneath the surface of Barsoom. They engineered the legend of The Tree of Life as well as creating much of the life on Barsoom. Anyways I hope this Barsoomian calendar works out.
I have two possible solutions:
- No synchronisation with the real Mars calender. The Barsoomian year will be 670 padans long and there will be no leap years. In this version I would use either ERBS’s birthday of the day the first part of A Princess of Mars was published as reference date.
- Synchronisations with the real Mars calender. The Barsoomian year will generally be 669 padans long (and 667 in leap years every five years), because the real Mars year is 668.6 Mars days long. In this version every year begins on the Martian spring equinox.
Which one should I use?
Is it possible to use both?
It is, because it is only important for the conversion of a date.
The library is complete. 
It allows you:
- to set and get a Barsoom date (ord, teeam, padan) (and each single element of it)
- to set and get a Barsoom time (zode xat tal) (and each single element of it)
- to convert an Earth date into a Barsoom date and back
- to change the reference Earth date (ERB’s birthdate (= September 1,1875) for a normal unsynchronized date / the beginning of Mars year 1 (= April 11, 1955)) for an synchronized date
- to set and get the base ord from which the ords are counted
- to set and get the flag which defines if the date is synchronized with the real Mars and thus has a shorter leap year every five Mars years (or not).
- to get the leap ord status of a Barsoom date
But sadly I cannot upload it here. 
I’ve corrected a simple error in the conversion of a Barsoom date into an Earth date.
Unsynchronized Barsoom date:
Ord: 76 Teean: 09 Padan: 38 Zode: 01 Xat: 26 Tal: 124
Barsoom date synchronized with Mars year:
Ord: 35 Teean: 07 Padan: 59 S Zode: 05 Xat: 46 Tal: 181
I’ve found a way to upload the files. Just remove the ‘.pdf’ from the file and unzip it.
barsoomDate.zip.pdf (3.8 KB)
barsoomDate.js contains the JavaScript library.
barsoomDate.html contains only an example which gives the current time as Barsoom dates, one synchronized with the real world Mars year (which begins with the martian spring equinox) and one that begins on ERB’s birthday.
There still might be some bugs if you are using the synchronized calendar and enter values beyond the normal range.
A full documentation is still missing but the comments should allow you to unterstand how to use the function.
If you have any questions and suggestions, please post them here.