It's the year , and we're at the dawn of the 22nd century. Yep, that's what's coming next: the 22nd century. And as we all know, we're currently in the 21st century, but the years start with And in the 20th century, they all started with 19, and in the 19th, with 18, and so on.
No 22nd century spoilers, please. It can be hard to remember this, especially when you go back a few hundred years, which is why we sometimes see people use, say, 16th century which should refer to years that begin with 15 when they really mean s , which clearly refers to years that begin with We also sometimes see people confuse the "hundreds" form with the "century" one, referring to a date like as occurring in the "s.
The thing to remember is that the number in the name of the century the 16th century, for example is always one higher than the number that starts the century's years: the years of the 16th century start with There's logic behind it, of course.
The first century of the current era aka the 1st century CE or AD didn't start with ; it started with 1 more on the implications of that below. It wasn't until the second century, aka the 2nd century, that the years had a digit in the hundreds column: the year was a century and a half into the new era, putting it smack-dab in the middle of the 2nd century.
AD also styled A. AD is contrasted with BC also styled B. It depends on who you ask. 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.
This makes years. There are years between zero and , not years. The th year does not run to the end of 99, it runs to the end of , up to How could it run to its own beginning?
A century is complete years. There are, however, some 40 other calendar systems in use, all of which are in different years that change on different dates.
But that same conference also decided that this reckoning "shall not interfere with the use of local or other standard time where desirable. 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.
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