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:
“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In another year I’ll have enough money saved. Then I’m gonna go back to my hometown in Oregon and I’m gonna build a house for my mother and myself. And join the country club and take up golf. And I’ll meet the proper man with the proper position. And I’ll make a proper wife who can run a proper home and raise proper children. And I’ll be happy, because when you’re proper, you’re safe.”
—Daniel Taradash (b. 1913)