Why were people scared of Y2K?
Y2K stands for Year 2000, the K being a short term for one thousand, 2K is then two thousand. The concern came from the clocks in many electrical devices, mainly computers. Your toaster was not in danger at any time, contrary to what Homer Simpson may have told you. Internal clocks were not originally programmed to be able to turn 19__ into 20__. Sure the decades would flip over but computer programmers made the 19 a stationary number, that is to say the computers considered the date to be 98 or 99, not 1998, or 1999. Since the 19 would not change computers would consider the year 2000 to be the year 1900, this would cause unpredictable problems for computers, especially in the finance industry. A computer would consider things like cars to be way younger than they could possibly be. Your 1968 ford would be negative 68 years old, how do you calculate the depreciation for that!
The solution was to manually change everything that used this old system, and for the most part there were no problems. Banks had all managed to avert a potential disaster. I don’t know about you but I can replace my home computer, but not if the bank loses all my money.
To find out more of the specific potential dangers check this December of 1999 page out.
http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/science/y2k/technical.html
