At 2:10 PM 1/6/99, Hawkins, Darwin wrote:
>I just can't stand it any longer, so here's some input from a nit-picking
>Engineer:
>
>Hans, Robert, Bob, J. R. Bruman, et. al.
>
>Look at it this way:
>
>If I was born in the year 1938 then my age on my birthday this year is 60
>(1998-1938). In other words, I can calculate my age by subtracting the
>birthdate year from the present year.
>
>By your way of counting the years, if I was born in year 0000 and it is now
>my birthday in 1999, subtracting the two numbers would make me 1999 years
>old (although by you method I would have been alive for 2000 years- - -I
>would have to always add 1 to the difference). The math doesn't work if the
>first year is 0000, it must be 0001. Now, let's calculate it again. If I was
>born in 0001, and it is now my birthday in 1999, my age would be 1998. I
>would attain the age of 2000 on my birthday in 2001. At the time our present
>calendar (which didn't exist then, in fact there was no mathematical
>representation for zero until well into recent history) went from BC to AC,
>the instant the clock ticked off one bizillionith of a second, you would be
>into the first year AD, year 1AD, not year zero. If you were born during
>that first bizillionith of a second, then on 1/1/2001, you would be 2000
>years old.
>Tell you what Mr. Dolezal, I'll put 100 apples on the table. If you begin
>with zero for the first apple, you will end up counting 101 apples by your
>system. If I ate your "zero" apple, how many would you have left, 100 or 99?
>
>Here's another offer, all of you that think the year 2000 is the start of
>the third millennium, please loan me $2000 (and count it out right in front
>of me), I promise to immediately pay you back $1999 (since you think 1999 is
>a total of 2000) by letting you have back the first non existent $1.
>
>In out time/calendar system, is there a zero second? A zero minute? A zero
>hour?
>If there are 7 days per week, where is the zero day? The zero month? Of
>course not! Zero is nothing, na-na, zilch, it only exists to separate
>positive numbers from negative numbers and to indicate the absence of
>anything countable or measurable.
>
>Two of the definitions of zero is:
>
>An element of a set that when added to any other element in the set produces
>a sum identical with the element to which it is added.
>
>A cardinal number indicating the absence of any or all units under
>consideration. (If the table is empty, is that part of the first apple?)
>
>How do we get to that first apple on the table. It is either there or it
>isn't. We don't go through invisible pieces of a "zero" apple before we put
>the first one down.
>If there was a year 0000, then the time from the beginning of 1BC to the end
>of 1AD would 3 years and I can't imagine it taking a year for Christ to be
>born.
>
>The mistake that most people tend to make is to assign some significance to
>"zero" and treat it as if it has some value. There is none. The instant you
>move away from "zero" time point, you are into the first interval, the first
>day of the first year of the first century of the first millennium. On
>1/1/2001 we will be in the first day of the first year of the first century
>of the third millennium.
>
>There is not a Roman numeral for the concept of "zero".
>
>A symbol for "zero" did not exist during the early AD centuries. It is a
>Western culture invention. Early mathematicians used a blank space or "-".
>
>
>Burman said when you measure in units any quantity that may have positive or
>negative value, your scale must look like this:
>
> -N....-3,-2,-1,-0,+0,+1,+2,+3...+N
>
>Wrong! A sign (+ or -) does not exist for zero. Proper scale is:
>
>-N....-3,-2,-1,0,+1,+2,+3....+N
>
>As soon as you come off the "zero" with any value at all, no matter how
>small, it will then be a positive or negative number. Again, if I owed you
>$2000, would you let me pay you just $1999?
Darwin et. al. :
I do not pretend to be an expert in calendar math, but it seems to me that
the following reasoning is logical:
If I had been born on January 1, 1898, I would have been one year old on
January 1, 1899, two years old on January 1, 1900, and three years old on
January 1, 1901.
So, if I had been born January 1, 2BC, I would have been one year old on
January 1, 1BC, two years old on January 1, 00, three years old on January
1, 1AD.
That is, "zero year" is the "0" year in the passage between 1BC and 1AD, as
1900 was a "zero year" that rolled the 19th century into the 20th, from
1899 to 1901. 1900 counts, doesn't it? And, it was a full year long. We
didn't skip, in "one bdzillionth of a second," from 1899 to 1901. Just
because the "zero year" came between 1BC and 1AD, isn't it just as much a
year as 1800, 1900, or, for that matter, 2000???? Doesn't it deserve its
place in history?
Maybe I am missing something, but somehow "0" seems to have been an
important digit in the passage of time.
Bob Dolezal
