How railway timetables became Unix time
12 hours ago
- #time-systems
- #history
- #computer-science
- Local mean time (LMT) varied by region until railways necessitated standardization, leading to the adoption of GMT.
- GMT is based on solar time, but its irregularities led to the development of atomic time and UTC, which includes leap seconds for corrections.
- Computers use Unix time, measured from Jan 1, 1970, and handle time via system time, RTC, and NTP, with challenges like the Year 2038 problem and leap seconds.
- Application-level time handling requires careful management of time zones, using standards like ISO 8601 and TZDB, and monotonic clocks to avoid issues.
- Time systems in computing are complex due to historical, political, and technical factors, necessitating robust APIs and databases for accurate representation.