So to what century does the year 0 AD belong?
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Hexadecimal, Octal, and Binary. 1950
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Howard,
You’re not disagreeing with me, on the contrary, you’re saying the same thing I am.
I just asked a question and then completed it after Neville’s intervention:
Where was I going with this?
The 21st century began in 2001, and since 1999 it has only caused confusion: whether it began in 2000 or 2001, and apparently after 24 (or 25) years we are still dealing with this problem.
Jorge
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Neville,
I’m not the person to answer that, I was counting on your help 
, but Anno Domini began in the year 1.
Jorge
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We have been dealing with it since we abandoned Roman numerals.
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Good question. Maybe it is like the origin you were talking about earlier.
But year 0 does count as 1 year. Just like a child born today is not 1 year old.
Year 0 begins the the journey to 1. It can be a 1/2 year old or any fraction to one you
want, but year 0 is not 1 until it is the first day of year 1.
And so the 1st century are years starting at 0 thru 100. That sounds like 101 but 0 is not a year old until it is 1. I was born in 1950. If I happen to live 100 years that will be in 2050. In 2050 I would be 100 not 101.
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Oh, you are right , there is no AD 0. AD 1 follows 1BC
So the mistake goes way back to that… when this was invented in the 5th Century they had no zero, so they left year zero out.
If you stay with Roman numerals, that is fine, but if you use decimal numbers it becomes ambiguous… years ending in 00 dont belong when you start counting.
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I hope someone born on January 1, 2000 knows how old they are.
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Sorry Jorge, I misunderstood. We do agree.
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Exactly, Neville, the number “0” was only invented in the 5th century.
The centuries are counted from 1 to 100.
Our friend louyo @louyo1 created a topic with a healthy discussion: the 21st century is currently 24 years old, not a quarter of a century.
Howard,
Born at the end of the 20th century
Jorge
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So the first century began in 0001
OK it is consistent , but not in accord with modern maths.
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So 2000 in Roman is ?
And why use letters
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But what about 29 February never get old enough to buy a drink at the bar or vote
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MM
Because they did not have arabic numerals
Arabic numbers ( ie 0 …9) were introduced into Europe in the middle ages
The Romams never did calculations… they only used roman numerals for counting.
The ancient Greeks also used letters… but they had a placeholder symbol for zero, and were able to do calculations… can you imagine Ptolemy doing astronomical calculations with letters and only using whole numbers and fractions… no real numbers!
Zero is terribly important … you cant have
decimal numbers without it. We owe a lot to the Arabs/Indiansl
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My first job out of college I started on February 29. I never had an anniversary. I left about 3 years and 9 months later.
What’s wrong with this picture?
We have a couple city buildings with “improper” Roman numerals on them in town.
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1904
You are not supposed to repeat a letter more than 3 times
The DCCCC should be CM
and
It really should be 1905 because some Roman monk in the 5th century left out the year AD 0.
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I was just assuming they got paid by the “letter” to engrave the building or maybe it just didn’t look right being much shorter. In any case there are two city or county government buildings in town with a similar issues.
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Thanks for a bit of knowledge. This interested me enough to go and do a little reading on the subject.
“historical calendar skipped directly from 1 BC to AD 1”
“astronomical calendar inserts a year 0 for clarity”
Also why the debate of whether 2000 vs 2001 as the new millennium.
“absence of year 0 explains why technically the year 2001 marked the start of the 21st century, not 2000.”
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Imagine buying a car and paying in mmmmm….
Then trying to calculate road tax, insurance and hire purchase.
No wonder they did not sell many cars back then !
Just in case its a joke not serious.
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Imagine the reaction when we swapped from one date system to another and lost all those days. I can hardly stand the clocks changing by one hour
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