the system was recalibrated to count the number of whole seconds since the start of 1970. This number was stored as a signed 32-digit binary number, which allowed for a maximum of 2,147,483,647 seconds: a total of over sixty-eight years from 1970. And this was put in place by members of the generation who in the sixty-eight years leading up to 1970 had seen humankind go from the Wright brothers inventing the first powered airplane to humans dancing on the moon. They were sure that, by the year 2038, computers would have changed beyond all recognition and no longer use Unix time.
