An epoch is a specific date and time in computing that is used as a benchmark for system time measurements by computers. The majority of computer systems use a number that represents the amount of seconds that have passed since a certain, arbitrary date and time. For example, the Unix and POSIX systems measure time in seconds since Thursday, January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 UT, which is the Unix epoch. When it comes to Windows NT systems, which include Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022, the epoch is defined as the number of 100-nanosecond periods that have elapsed since January 1, 1601 00:00:00 UTC.[1] When defining a computing epoch, midnight Universal Time on a given day is nearly usually used.
