back to the future - Why did the time circuits default to 1885?

In Back to the Future II, on November 12 1955 the DeLorean with Doc in it gets struck by a bolt of lightning, sending him back to 12 AM 1 January 1885. The potential for this is alluded to previously when we see the time circuits flickering to this date. I can understand why the time circuits would default to 12 AM because in 24 hour time that's 00:00. I can also understand why it would default to 1st of January, because that's the beginning of a year. So far so good; the time circuits are defaulting to a 'base' time (i.e. the beginning). What I don't understand though is why did the year default to 1885? Surely it would make more sense for the year value to default to the year '0000', or '1900' or some other such date which marks the beginning of a century or millennium.

Answer

Digital time is stored as an offset from some date and time in the past, known as an epoch. For example, on MS Windows computers, the current time is measured as the number of nanoseconds since January 1, 1601.

Doc Brown must have chosen 1885 as the epoch for the clock in the time machine, and thus year 0 for the machine is actually 1885 on the Gregorian calendar.

Now, why he choose 1885 as day 0 for the clock we may never know.

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harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

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In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

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Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

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