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Programming Software

In Search Of The Epoch Child

The UNIX Epoch is 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970. That’s essentially the beginning of time for UNIX based systems. You know, “In the beginning when Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created the /usr and the /etc1.

I’m curious if anyone has tracked down someone (preferably a geek) who was born on the Unix Epoch. I guess we can’t be too exact since the question would be “are you born when your head is out, or when your butt is out? Can the cord still be attached or do you need to be unplugged?” or something to that effect.

All kidding aside, it would be interesting to know if anyone has come to the realization that they are the Epoch Child. I’m not sure (any calendar scholars can help me out here), but it seems the last child to have a time standard’s origin coincide with their birth may have been Jesus (and obviously any other child born that night). In that case, it seems they likely it was rounded as best they could (see Wikipedia discussion of Jesus’s Birth Year and Date).

Remember to account for the timezone. For example if your born in New York, that’s -5:00. So anyone feel like finding him/her? Obviously some proof would be necessary to prove your the epoch child.

It would also be interesting to find some others, but this seems to be the most interesting.

1 Yea, lame Genesis joke.

4 replies on “In Search Of The Epoch Child”

My birth certificate tells me that I was born at 1:41pm, so someone’s obviously decided at what point you’re born.

Of course most people probably don’t know the minute of their birth but I bet someone born at midnight on 1970-01-01 does (though possibly not someone born at 7:00pm on 1969-12-31 New York time).

You could just search the UK Birth Index for the 1st Jan 1970, ancestry.co.uk brings up 131 people!

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