Signed Years Without Year 0
Although he used the usual French terms "avant J.-C." (before Jesus Christ) and "après J.-C." (after Jesus Christ) to label years elsewhere in his book, the Byzantine historian Venance Grumel used negative years (identified by a minus sign, −) to label BC years and unsigned positive years to label AD years in a table, possibly to save space, without a year 0 between them.
The XML Schema language, sometimes used in connection with representing data for storage in computers, contains built-in primitive datatypes, date and dateTime, which do not allow a year zero, and designate years BC as negative numbers. Years contain at least four digits. Thus -0001 in that language is equivalent to 1 BC. However, the defining recommendation indicates a change to a system similar to ISO 8601 and astronomical year numbering is likely in the future.
Read more about this topic: Astronomical Year Numbering
Famous quotes containing the words signed, years and/or year:
“Bernstein: Girls delightful in Cuba stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery but dont feel right spending your money stop. There is no war in Cuba. Signed Wheeler. Any answer?
Charles Foster Kane: YesDear Wheeler, You provide the prose poems, Ill provide the war.”
—Orson Welles (19151985)
“The discovery of Pennsylvanias coal and iron was the deathblow to Allaire. The works were moved to Pennsylvania so hurriedly that for years pianos and the larger pieces of furniture stood in the deserted houses.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Listen, thats the one that done it. The dusters. They started it anyways. Blowin like this year after year. Blowin the land away. Blowin the crops away. Blowin us away now.”
—Nunnally Johnson (18971977)