On 24 Oct, 20:21, Dr J R Stockton
wrote:
In uk.transport.london message 39bb4a9f-1c49-4a8b-acbf-75f9835d6af9@j25
g2000yqa.googlegroups.com, Sat, 23 Oct 2010 07:28:23, MIG
posted:

Another bunch of rather less intelligent people insist that there was
a year zero, because "zero is a positive integer". *Zero might
represent a point in time when zero years have passed. *A year later,
one year has passed. *This would be the first year, and in any normal
counting system it would be referred to as year one, ie the number of
years that have passed when it is complete.

In IEEE-754 floating-point "single" and "Double" number formats. there
is both a +zero and a -zero. *They have the same value and compare
equal, but they are distinguishable, even in languages that do not offer
access to the bit patterns as such.

I don't think they were using those formats when the calendar was set
up.


Astronomer's notation calls 1 BC the year zero; it numbers years in the
usual arithmetic fashion, and agrees with the common notation for all of
AD.

That's kind of consistent in that when that year was complete, ie at
the same point zero when year 1 starts, zero years had passed beyond
the point zero where we start counting positively.

But one still starts counting from point zero, not from point minus
one, where "year zero" (or one BC) starts.