Twenty-five years ago, the world was preparing for a catastrophe: the millennium bug. The idea that computers around the world could fail at midnight on December 31, 1999 put many on alert. In the end, however, not much went wrong. The reason for the panic was a seemingly simple programming decision from the early days of information technology in the 1960s and 1970s. Memory space in computers was expensive and limited back then, which is why many programmers decided to store only the last two digits of the year. + Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox So "1970" simply became "70". This efficiency measure seemed logical at the time, but posed a problem as the year 2000 approached: computer programmes could interpret "00" as 1900, which would lead to incorrect calculations and system crashes. The consequences seemed unimaginable. Experts warned that critical systems such as flight control software, banking systems and power stations could be affected by this ...
