1999.

A once-distant year that still sounded like science fiction was rapidly coming to a close

as the year 2000 approached, with massive “millennium celebrations” planned to greet

the 2000s with excessive partying.

But looking beyond the street festivals and boundless optimism, there was an undercurrent

of pessimism and anxiety surrounding a computer glitch known as The Millennium Bug, The Year

2000 Problem, or simply: Y2K.

Set to occur at the stroke of midnight, capable of instigating all manner of disruptions,

ranging from the mundane to the apocalyptic.

And yet, once the new year arrived with few newsworthy problems occurring, many assumed

the Y2K threat had been exaggerated, or was even an outright hoax.

What happened?

With the millennium only hours away, many people are working down to the last minute

to fend off the Y2K Bug.

It's been called the world's most important extermination job

eliminating the Year 2000 computer bug.

The federal government now has ten response centers

across the country staffed 'round the clock.

The chance of major dislocation in our economy, the major dislocation in our standard lives

is very low.

I would certainly agree that it's below 10 percent.

When agencies are saying they're making good progress, they're 99% compliant, they're gonna

be there, they have every assurance that they'll be ready in time.

Lemme translate that to one phrase: they're not ready yet.

These global issues are the direct result of an equally real human oversight many people

now refer to as the Y2K, or Year 2000, problem.

This is a problem.

Things are gonna be broken, the electricity may be broken.

We will have to be patient while it's being fixed.

And y'know what?

While it's being fixed, we might actually enjoy some family time.

This is LGR Tech Tales, where we take a look at noteworthy stories of technological inspiration,

failure, and everything in-between.

This episode tells the tale of the infamous Y2K Bug and the crescendo of panic that ensued.

So what was the Year 2000 Problem to begin with?

Well Y2K, or Century Date Change as it was known for a while, can be most easily described

as a calendar problem.

For decades, computer programmers abbreviated the four digits of each calendar year down

to the last two digits.

So the year 1965 would be truncated to ‘65’ for example.

While humans had the common sense and context to understand a two digit year, the actual

computers might take this at face value.

Meaning that the year 2000 could instead be misinterpreted by a computer as the year 1900,

deeming 01/01/00 to be an earlier date than 12/31/99.

In hindsight, this seems like an easily avoidable problem, but when this shortcut was first

implemented it didn’t pose any immediate threat.

In fact, it made complete sense!

Some of the first widely-used computers in the United States, like the IBM 1401 introduced

in 1959, were programmed using paper punch cards.

These punch cards were a holdover from the electro-mechanical tabulating and accounting

machines computers replaced, and operators of those had often punched in 6-digit date

codes in the interest of saving time and space.

So when it came time to start using computer programs instead of accounting machines, the

same 6-digit date code carried over as well.

Then once the venerable IBM System/360 came along in 1964, its operating system continued

using 6-digit dates to maintain backwards compatibility when emulating IBM 1400 programs.

These abbreviated dates also had the welcome effect of saving a couple bits of data per

punch card, slightly decreasing the number of cards per program and lowering memory requirements.

Consider that a single two kilobyte board of core memory could cost a couple thousand

dollars, around 1 US dollar per bit.

And a 5 megabyte hard disk cost tens of thousands more, so it made sense to truncate programs

any way possible.

Sure, 6-digit years were a tad vague but big deal!

No way anyone would be running 1960s computer programs forty years later!

But that’s exactly what happened, especially in the realms of government, finance, and

infrastructure, where bureaucracy was high and change was slow.

And it’s not that computer programmers didn’t think ahead, this “Century Date Change”

or “CDC” problem as it was called, was noticed early on.

All the way back in 1958, computing pioneer Bob Bemer was one of the first to address

the issue publicly while he was an employee at IBM.

He was working on a genealogy program in conjunction with the Mormon Church, and their researchers

needed to distinguish between the years 1900, 1800, 1700, and so on.

Two-digit years made this impossible, so Mr. Bemer came up with a way of programming full

4-digit year references in COBOL.

Logically, this could become a problem in the future once the year 2000 arrived, but

despite Mr. Bemer repeatedly voicing his concerns for years,

the practice of two-digit year entry continued.

It was considered such a non-issue that on November 1, 1968, the Federal Information

Processing Standards Publication 4, “The Standard For Calendar Date,” was introduced.

This outlined how all information exchange between US government agencies would use the

now-standard 6-digit date, ensuring its usage far into the future.

And again, this didn’t go unnoticed.

Another IBM employee, Peter de Jager, came to his own realization about the Year 2000

Problem in 1977 while testing a new banking system.

He recognized the looming glitch, persistently voiced concern to his bosses, and like those

before him was very much ignored.

It simply wasn’t a big enough deal yet, and fixing so much code would be costly and

time-consuming and nobody wanted to do that.

A bit more credence was finally given to the idea in 1984,

with the release of “Computers in Crisis” by Jerome and Marilyn Murray.

In this book, the Murrays laid out the history of the problem, what might happen if it’s

left unresolved, and how to address the flaws in 6-digit date programming, complete with

hundreds of pages showing examples of corrected computer code.

Still, even as recognition of the problem rose among programmers and computer users

heading into the 1990s, it wasn’t until the rise of fledgling internet services that

the Century Date Change problem truly gained traction.

Arguably, a contributing factor is the term “Y2K” itself, something far more catchy

than “Century Date Change.”

The coining of the term is usually attributed to a programmer by the name of David Eddy,

who first used “Y2K” to refer to the problem in an email sent on June 12, 1995, spreading

virally from there.

But beyond the catchy name, what finally made governments, companies, and the public sit

up and take notice of Y2K in the mid-90s?

The answer is simple: panic.

Never underestimate the power of public panic!

"Power outages, water outages."

My main worry is the energy grid.

And if we can't get power, we can't get water.

So it's something that is totally unpredictable.

I think there are individual banks that will probably go bankrupt.

There are individual credit unions that will disappear over this issue.

Some people will die.

"The sooner you start your preparations, the better your opportunity to get the supplies"

"you need at reasonable prices."

News reports, websites, TV specials, radio shows, newspaper opinion pieces.

The Y2K coverage grew exponentially starting in 1996 as the new millennium drew ever closer,

and IT professionals warned with increasing volume of the impending problems that would occur.

By 1997, many experts were declaring a point of no return “time bomb” was approaching,

and who knew what chaos might ensue if things weren’t soon addressed.

Especially when it came to computers that were now a couple of decades old, like those

used in electrical grids, air traffic control, social security, emergency response systems,

banking and financial institutions, hospitals and hospice centers, oil refineries and gas

processing, and of course, all those scary-looking nuclear power plants and missile silos.

The more the news coverage increased, the more people started wondering: what if everything

turned off, all at once, on January 1st?

Or worse, what if the glitch made systems go haywire, dropping planes from the sky and

launching nukes at random?

Soon, Century Date Change bills were enacted at state and local levels, bringing in tech

firms to assist in rewriting old code.

Former COBOL programmers were brought out of retirement to help fix their own programs

from the 60s and 70s.

Individual contractors were hired by countless institutions and businesses

starting at $1500 a day in 1997.

Governments, corporations, and small businesses around the globe were finally taking Y2K dead

seriously in 1998, with an estimated 300 billion to half a trillion dollars spent globally

once it was all said and done.

Of course, that was just the response on an official level: all those large institutions

still using decades-old hardware and software.

You’ll note that personal computers haven’t really been brought up as a major concern,

and with good reason: a sizable margin of home computers were never going to be that

affected by Y2K, relative to minicomputers and mainframes.

Even going back to the early Macintosh and IBM PC systems from the 1980s, those accepted

the full 4-digit year 2000, no problem.

Granted, there were countless PC clones, many of which used two-digit years in the BIOS,

as well as the bigger problem where your computer

and OS was compatible but your older software wasn’t.

A good number of applications still only recognized the last two digits, but by the late 90s there

were very few of those programs still in use, and what remained likely wasn’t controlling

anything *vital* to society.

Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, even MS-DOS: none of these systems were ever at much risk, especially

by the mid-to-late ‘90s when the public finally started caring.

And larger companies like Microsoft made sure to let users know there were updates for any

of their outdated software, even offering a free Year 2000 Resource CD-ROM to help users

better understand the situation regarding PCs.

Still, overarching Y2K anxieties led tons of folks to get the wrong idea anyway.

The prevalence of “Y2K Compliant” labels all over the place probably didn’t help,

leading to a misguided idea that anything remotely computer-related could stop working.

Computers themselves were of course labeled this way, but also software that was never

at risk in the first place.

Bicycle Rummy?

Oh sure that’s Y2K compatible, why not?

If an item used a microchip, or heck, used electricity in some way, slap a Y2K sticker on it!

Cash registers, KVM switches, otoscopes, digital scales.

Of course, remember to turn your computers off before midnight too, because reasons.

Thanks, Best Buy.

Despite the responsibility falling largely on the shoulders of governments and corporations,

rather than individuals, this didn’t stop the onslaught of folks capitalizing on the

hysteria by peddling personal preparedness.

There were countless Y2K books, many of them centered around post-apocalyptic survivalism

and off-the-grid living.

Seminars were held that pitched the need for prepping at work and at home.

Y2K News Magazine got printed for a couple years, detailing Y2K-related facts and rumors

on a bi-weekly basis.

Outdoor and military supply stores bundled food, stoves, and lanterns together and sold

them as “Y2K Survival Kits.”

Cleverly named online stores popped up, like Y2Kmart,

billing themselves as “one-stop disaster shops.”

Folks extra-worried about personal safety went into stores asking retailers for quote,

“Y2K guns,” leading to a spike in US weapons sales.

Amish Mennonite business owners saw a notable rise in sales

due to their offerings of analog technology.

People began stocking up underground bunkers and fallout shelters in numbers not seen since

the height of the Cold War.

Cookbooks were released focusing on food preparation in the absence of electricity and clean water.

Collectibles were sold cute-ifying the Millennium Bug as a soft, plushie insect.

Y2K Survival Shows were hosted on county fairgrounds, providing a kind of end-times family event.

Computer hardware makers sold add-on cards promising to make your BIOS Y2K compatible.

Software developers released applications for analyzing and updating PCs for potential glitches.

Certain religious leaders and churches were hailing the new millennium as the beginning

of the end times as written in the book of Revelation.

Mock movie posters were sold that combined mid-century horror movie tropes

and Y2K apocalypse fears.

Actual Y2K movies got made, like Y2K: The Movie, a 1999 made-for-TV disaster flick.

Somehow Leonard Nimoy got roped into hosting

an hour-long Y2K scare-a-thon released to VHS.

Even musicians couldn’t resist making Y2K-themed songs, like “The Millennium Bug” by Terry Breen.

And naturally, comedians, comic strips, and TV shows all joined in poking fun at the whole shebang.

Happy new -- whaa?

Oh no, it’s happening! [electrical zapping]

[tires squealing, cars crashing]

So with all the years of Millennium Bug silliness and scare tactics, it’s no surprise that

many folks were still expecting the worst.

But once the day finally arrived and 1999 turned to 2000, Y2K was more or less a no-show.

Power kept flowing.

Planes kept flying.

Cars kept driving.

Banks kept banking.

Even computers that weren’t turned off before midnight did just fine!

There were a number of issues though, even if largely limited to brief, localized interruptions.