## Timing in Computing Dates and time zones are notoriously difficult to calculate programmatically. Computers solve this by tracking time as a single rising integer: the **Unix Timestamp**. ### What is the Unix Epoch? The Unix Epoch represents the point in time designated as **January 1, 1970, at 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)**. - A Unix timestamp is the number of seconds that have elapsed since this event. - It is time-zone independent, making it easy to store in databases and sync across global servers. ### Converting Timestamps To display Unix timestamps to users, developers convert the raw seconds count into local timezone dates. Our online epoch tool helps convert standard timestamps to UTC/Local structures and vice-versa.