Why does the UNIX epoch begin at January 1st, 1970 at midnight? I understand that epochs make computing easier rather than counting all the way back to the beginning of time. Was the start chosen arbitrarily? Based on something significant? Just the closest human-relevant date when this was implemented? Will there be a point where the beginning of the epoch will be changed? As of this post it’s already been 1,041,198,471 seconds and counting.
One last question, is it Pacific time or another time zone or it just doesn’t matter?
The Unix operating system was developed in 1969 by Bell Labs and named in 1970, so I would guess that they choose January 1, 1970 for that reason. The time is based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).