But when it comes to talking about centuries, and giving numbers for ages, keep in mind that the label we use to describe an ongoing period of time is different to the number we assign it!
For more information about styles of writing dates in general, please also see this article. There was no year 0 and the first century ended at the end of the year AD. As approached, everyone got excited about the change in digits from 19 to 20 and decided to hold their parties on 31 December And why not?
But the new millennium began on 1 January This kind of confusion has been in the air since there has been a perceptible body of public received ideas and opinion — since there has been a public in the modern sense. We see evidence of it as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries approached. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
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The first century ended on Dec. The second decade began on Jan. The second century began on Jan. Centuries always end in New centuries always begin in Glienna of South Pasadena. He explained that he raised the question at a kaffeeklatsch of his model railroading club, and it was argued for more than an hour. It is not stupidity that causes this misperception; it is some kind of rigid and unassailable mind-set. I have exchanged three letters with a former Caltech professor, H. Victor Neher, who seems irretrievably stuck in his conviction that the century will end on Dec.
His arguments are supported by irrelevant historical asides and illustrated by graphs that he heroically misinterprets. Like most of the heretics, he seems to be hung up on zero as a starting point. The 99th year then begins at 98 and runs until the beginning of The th year begins at 99 and runs until the end of 99 or the beginning of the th year.
The year is special--even though it isn't the start of the 21st century--because it is a leap year. Julius Caesar devised the leap year to correct for the fact that the earth circles the sun in Because this is not a whole number, the months of the year would slowly fall out of sync with the seasons. A fairly precise correction to the Gregorian calendar debuted in , and stated that a century year will only be a leap year if it is evenly divisible by which is true for Y2K.
Frank Morgan, the Meenan Third Century Professor of Mathematics at Williams College, gives the following answer, adapted from his upcoming Math Chat Book, which is based on his Math Chat TV show and column, both available at the Mathematical Association of America's Web site: The inexorable mathematical logic is that the official calendar millennium does not start until the year The first years end with the year , and the next thousand start with , the first year of the third millennium.
Imagine a vast army of soldiers, with 1, men in each row. In the first row are soldiers 1 to 1,, in the second, 1, to 2,, and in the third, 2, to 3, The third row starts with soldier 2, Or suppose you work 1, hours a year. The first year, you work hours 1 to 1,, the second year hours 1, to 2,, and the third year begins with your 2,st hour of work. So we should definitely celebrate the official calendar millennium on January 1, But there is another millennium to celebrate: the millennium of the s, the years that begin with a 2.
This change will affect every check we write, every letter we date. It is exciting to see all the digits roll over for the first time since the year advanced from to , when Ethelred II was king of England; as exciting as seeing the odometer in my Ferrari roll over from 99, to , or seeing the whole Senate roll over to new Senators which probably never will happen, but then again, I don't really have a Ferrari either.
Of course, this change in date is what causes the Y2K problems with computers, which will interpret '00 as instead of So maybe it's safer to wait until the official to celebrate.
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