Computing
The time kept internally by a computer system is usually expressed as the number of time units that have elapsed since a specified epoch, which is nearly always specified as midnight Universal Time on some particular date.
Software timekeeping systems vary widely in the granularity of their time units; some systems may use time units as large as a day, while others may use nanoseconds. For example, for an epoch date of midnight UTC on January 1, 1900, and a time unit of a second, the time of the midnight between January 1 and 2, 1900 is represented by the number 86400, the number of seconds in one day. When times prior to the epoch need to be represented, it is common to use the same system, but with negative numbers.
These representations of time are mainly for internal use. If an end user interaction with dates and times is required, the software will nearly always convert this internal number into a date and time representation that is comprehensible to humans.
Read more about this topic: Epoch (reference Date)