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From: omalley@mace.cc.purdue.edu (John O'Malley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: What happened in 1904?
Message-ID: <5099@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 13 Jul 90 13:57:15 GMT
References: <1990Jul13.131831.26890@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: omalley@mace.cc.purdue.edu (John O'Malley)
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Lines: 17

In article <1990Jul13.131831.26890@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> rolf@sparc1 writes:
>
>  You probably have noticed that if your battery gets removed, or the
>PRAM gets zapped that you get some files with dates in 1904. I heard
>a LONG time ago that there was a joke of some sort behind this.
>   Anybody know it?

The year 1900, despite the fact that it is evenly divisible by 4, was
not a leap year.  1904 was a leap year.

I thought I heard that Apple didn't wanna bother programming in that
exception, so they had the clock start in 1904 instead of 1900.

-John
---
John O'Malley               / Macintosh  / Purdue University / (317)
omalley@mace.cc.purdue.edu / Specialist / Computing Center  / 494-1787