“Note that the OpenVMS time display and manipulation routines allow for only 4 digits in the ‘YEAR’ field. We expect this to be corrected in a future release of OpenVMS sometime prior to 31-DEC-9999.”
Fascinating story, but those cycles intrigue me. Wikipedia says they’re the Indication, Solar and Lunar cycles, which explains why they have those periods, but it doesn’t tell us how the starting position of the cycles was chosen. Also in Wikipedia it gives a hint, saying that Scaliger “knew that 1 BC or 0 had the character 9 of the solar cycle, 1 of the lunar cycle, and 3 of the indiction cycle”. Can anyone enlighten me about where these numbers come from?
Oh this is sweeet <3
Wow. What a wonderful article.
“Note that the OpenVMS time display and manipulation routines allow for only 4 digits in the ‘YEAR’ field. We expect this to be corrected in a future release of OpenVMS sometime prior to 31-DEC-9999.”
Ohh, I was worried for a moment. 😉
Fascinating story, but those cycles intrigue me. Wikipedia says they’re the Indication, Solar and Lunar cycles, which explains why they have those periods, but it doesn’t tell us how the starting position of the cycles was chosen. Also in Wikipedia it gives a hint, saying that Scaliger “knew that 1 BC or 0 had the character 9 of the solar cycle, 1 of the lunar cycle, and 3 of the indiction cycle”. Can anyone enlighten me about where these numbers come from?
Interesting! Thanks for sharing 🙂