[LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 88, Issue 31

[Joseph M Gwinn]

Well, while the idea of zero wasn't well established in Christ's time, they
did have zero (and negative numbers) in the time of Pope Gregory, who
established the Gregorian Calendar in 1582.  But zero can still mean
nothing to this day, so it seems unlikely that any religion will claim year
zero.

..<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_%28number%29>


Joe Gwinn




From:	"Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
To:	Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>, Joseph M
            Gwinn <gwinn at raytheon.com>
Date:	01/14/2014 07:01 PM
Subject:	Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 88, Issue 31



In message
<OF8E203EEC.858D9F51-ON85257C60.008191BF-85257C60.0081B23E at mck.us.ra
y.com>, Joseph M Gwinn writes:


>The problem was religious - nobody was going to have Christ born in the

>year zero.


Actually, that was not really the issue, the issue was that they
didn't have negative numbers at that time and therefore also
didn't realize that "nothing" was a number.

Negative numbers only came into acceptance during the heydays of
the Venetian trade, where somebody, can't remember the name, argued
that "we need negative numbers for this, because he owes more than
he owns." or words to similar effect.

At the time the "Anno Domini" convention was put into tradition,
it would only make sense for them to talk about the year before and
the year after.  Nobody would have any reason to put a zero in there,

If they had tried to do so, it would give no meaning to them, because
"year zero" would literally mean "no year" or "year of nothing".

--
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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