[Info-vax] Why is starting epoch 17 Nov 1858?

[Michael Moroney]

On 3/9/2021 3:14 PM, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <bea6103e-99a8-465f-9a55-b60aa241138dn at googlegroups.com>,
> james.c.decamp at gmail.com (Jim DeCamp) wrote:
> 
>> Digital, based in Maynard, Massachusetts recruited heavily from
>> Cambridge, so somehow, they adopted the same epoch, but not the
>> same representation.
> 
> It's not a terrible epoch. It's before the date of birth of anyone who
> was alive when VMS was released: one should not use OS time for that kind
> of thing, but that doesn't stop some people from doing it.

If it were up to me, I would have used whatever date the Gregorian 
calendar first went into effect somewhere, so that earlier dates, in 
fact all valid Gregorian calendar dates, could be represented. But, of 
course, it wasn't up to me.

(somewhere = some Catholic country/ies, probably Italy. The Protestant 
countries were quite reluctant to implement such popery at first.)