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)
“Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, ‘A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This Child I to myself will take;”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“We hold on to hopes for next year every year in western Dakota: hoping that droughts will end; hoping that our crops won’t be hailed out in the few rainstorms that come; hoping that it won’t be too windy on the day we harvest, blowing away five bushels an acre; hoping ... that if we get a fair crop, we’ll be able to get a fair price for it. Sometimes survival is the only blessing that the terrifying angel of the Plains bestows.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)