Century (c)

CalendarCurrent unit

One hundred years.

1 century = 3,155,695,200 seconds (exactly).

About the century

From Latin centum, a hundred, century has meant a hundred of many things. For time it became popular as a way to speak about a span longer than a lifetime can easily contain, and some languages organise history around it: Italian uses terms like Quattrocento for the 15th century, and Swedish writes 1900-talet for the years 1900 to 1999. Whether such a century starts at year 00 or year 01 is an old argument.

A century is 100 years, which here means 100 average Gregorian years. The strict view counts from year 1, because the AD calendar has no year zero, so the 1st century AD ran from AD 1 to AD 100 and the 21st century covers 2001 to 2100. The popular view groups years by their hundreds digit, making the 20th century 1900 to 1999. The Gregorian calendar itself treats century years specially, since 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years while 1600 and 2000 were.

Sources: Wikipedia: Century; Wikipedia: Gregorian calendar

Century conversion chart

1 century expressed in every other time unit:

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