integer value starting at 1900 for the year. This limits the year to a maximum of 2,147,485,547 (2,147,483,647 + 1900).

Alternative proposals have been made (some of which are already in use), such as storing either milliseconds or microseconds since an epoch (typically either 1 January 1970 or 1 January 2000) in a signed 64-bit integer, providing a minimum range of 292,000 years at microsecond resolution. In particular, Java's and JavaScript's use of 64-bit signed