Epoch Time Explained: What Is Unix Epoch and Why January 1 1970?
The origin of Unix epoch time: why 1970-01-01, how POSIX defines it, the 2038 problem, and how modern systems handle 64-bit timestamps.
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Tags: developer-tools, timestamps, epoch
Epoch Time Explained: What Is Unix Epoch and Why January 1, 1970? If you have ever looked at a Unix timestamp and wondered why maps to January 1, 1970 at midnight UTC, you are not alone. The choice was not arbitrary — it was a pragmatic decision made by the team that built Unix. This article explains the history, the reasoning, and how the Unix epoch compares to the other time reference points you will encounter as a developer. Why January 1, 1970? Unix was developed in the late 1960s at Bell Labs by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and colleagues. The operating system went through several iterations. In early versions, timestamps used 32-bit integers counting in units of 1/60th of a second — a choice that quickly proved limiting. When the Unix time system was redesigned to count whole…
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