WFAA looks back on the Y2K scare in a full-length special 25 years later.
DALLAS — Today, we couldn’t live without computers. Many of you are probably reading this from a smartphone or laptop! But 25 years ago, several people thought computers would be the end of us.
The Year 200 Problem, commonly known as Y2K, was a hypothesis that a computer flaw would have caused major issues when the machines were dealing with dates past Dec. 31, 1999. At the time, many programs simply used the last two digits of the year, which would make the years 1900, 2000 or even 21000 indistinguishable from one another.
Theories about what would happen when the computers had to move into the new millennia ranged from computer systems crashing entirely, bringing down the world wide web, to a computer-induced apocalypse.
This special compiles WFAA’s coverage of the Y2K scare before, during and after New Year’s Day in 2000.
Watch our special presentation compiling WFAA’s coverage of Y2K here:
In the end, the problem was solved. Software and hardware companies like Microsoft and Apple simply released updates that converted the two-digit year to a full four-digit year. Let’s just hope things are as simple for those living in the year 10,000!