This memento was to celebrate the massive effort to prepare Alyeska’s computer and automation systems for the Y2K or Millennium Bug event in year 2000. At that time, most computer programs used 2 digit date fields for years. At the end of 1999, they would go from 99 to 00 (for 2000), often with very unacceptable consequences. There was a rule, “years divisible by 100 are not leap years except once every 400 years.” This would made year 2000 a leap year but there’s an exception every 2,000 years. And last, the date, Sept 9, 1999, was a potential problem. It would display as 9999 which often meant “Unknown Date” or “End of Program” in older programs. Being a sophisticated company, Alyeska had many computer programs and digital control systems using dates. Identifying and fixing each before they became a problem was considered a major achievement.
12/31/1999 – 01/01/2000
6.5″ H x 6.86″ W x 1″ D [LNM]
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