During the 1990’s the acronym “Y2K” became a common expression, especially in the computer industry. It also became a term of ill foreboding, of potential gloom and doom, the more so where the general public had little understanding about what Y2K stood for, what it meant and what caused it. Naturally, the philatelic world also paid some attention to this phenomenon. This article serves to explain the Y2K problem and the philatelic happenings around Y2K.
What caused Y2K ?
Today’s Personal Computers (PCs) tend to have a memory capacity in the range 32 – 128 Mb, with its upper range increasing each year (1 Mb = 1 Megabyte which means 1,000,000 bytes). In other words, modern PCs have an internal memory (also called RAM) for storing information of up to 128 million characters. PCs were only introduced in the late 70s / early 80s, so prior to the era of the PCs, when one spoke about computers, one spoke about a machine which today would be called a mainframe . With the arrival of the PC it became necessary to distinguish between a personal computer, which was small and relatively inexpensive, on the one side and a mainframe computer, which was large, and relatively expensive, on the other side. Before the PC arrived, this distinction was not necessary and the term computer was used in the generic sense.
In the 1950s and 60s computers had a very limited memory capacity. It was not uncommon in those days that a large corporate computer had a memory of only 4000 bytes. At that time one of its input media (the method used to get information into the computer) was the punched card, in short punchcard.
Each punchcard had a limit of 80 characters (although versions of punchcard existed that could hold a different number of characters), and hence it comes as no surprise that storage capacity at that time, both in the computer as well as in its prime input medium, was in short supply. Every programmer in these days who was worth his salt, would do everything possible to record as much information as possible in the minimum number of bytes / characters. Therefore it was practice in those early days of computing to record dates only in 6 characters: YYMMDD, thus excluding the characters indicating the century (an obvious exception was the insurance industry where one had to deal with dates crossing century boundaries). This non-recording of the century in dates saved space in memory, in punchcards, on paper when the date was printed, and ultimately also in time, as the century portion of the date would not need processing, as it was always assumed to be in the 20th century. If a computer program needed to calculate next year, adding 1 to YY in the date in the program would yield the correct results. Although obviously flawed, this practice for recording dates continued for the next 30 years.
During the 90’s the Information Technology (IT) industry realized that this would create enormous problems with the new millennium coming. When the year was (19)99, adding 1 to it would give the incorrect result of (19)00. It seemed that disaster loomed and a light form of mass hysteria developed. In the discussions that followed, the concept of the “year 2000 date problem” quickly assumed its own acronym of Y2K, or better “Y2K bug”.
Explanation of Y2K bug :
Y = Year
K = kilo = 1000
Y2K = Year 2000
Bug = computer jargon for “error”
Therefore, the Y2K bug was not a real organic bug, although words like infection and inoculation were freely used, it was a straightforward computer program error. But it was an error of gigantic proportions. The IT industry worldwide had to change and correct millions of computer programs which had been written in the preceding decades. Each program had to be checked individually to establish if it was Y2K-compliant (i.e. would it work correctly in the new millennium as well) or not. Billions of dollars had to be spent (and have been spent indeed) to rectify the problem. The problem was escalated to include imbedded code, in other words any electronic chip that included processing code could possibly fail. This last approach meant that appliances and machines which used microchips or microprocessors, like cars, airplanes, lifts, bankvaults, video machines, etc. could possibly stop working when the clock struck midnight, with potentially catastrophic results. This escalation to include all microchips later proved to be a case of overcautiousness and also the biggest reason for the general public becoming worried. The whole Y2K issue became a mini industry on its own, with seminars, conferences, theories and explanations and the hype soon became the subject of talks by prophets of doom, Y2K-consultants, advisors and talk shows. It also caused the world to hold its collective breath upon the dawn of the new millennium. People began stockpiling food items, and some predicted that the world would descend into the digital dark ages. Some wondered: would life as we knew it be able to carry on?
However, when the new millennium arrived, all lights stayed on, all planes stayed in the air, all telephones hummed and the computers continued computing. Although a few minor hiccups occurred, the majority of programs had been fixed properly and life carried on as normal. The Y2K bug had been killed.
Cyberphilatelically speaking, Y2K was an interesting event. Although the new millennium itself was commemorated by many postal authorities, only a few stamp issues were dedicated to the Y2K problem itself.
Locally, one of the earliest releases (although not a stamp) was a Postal Card from the South African National Year 2000 Decision Support Centre, a government funded organization to raise the public’s awareness about Y2K and the organization’s campaign to eradicate the bug. This card was issued on August 19, 1998, which was South Africa’s National Y2K Awareness Day. The front of the card carried the ominous warning: “You’ve only got 500 days left…”.
The first set of stamps dedicated to Y2K was issued on May 2, 1999 (Scott 1847) by Indonesia in the form of a se-tenant pair. Both stamps show a different “bug”, one shows a robot-like creature, and one bug looks like having been built from an integrated circuit design. Other countries which depicted the Y2K bug on their stamps was St Kitts which issued two stamps on December 29, 1999 (Sc 470-471) showing a bug-like creature destroying a PC on the one stamp and a world in mourning on the other stamp. Clearly St Kitts was expecting the worst.
Gabon issued a stamp on February 16, 2000 (Sc 985) showing how the Y2K bug had been killed. Apparently in their case a very large hammer had been used. The fact that a PC might not survive such aggressive treatment clearly did not matter.
Liberia did it slightly differently and issued a set of Beetle (as in VW) stamps in 2000, with the term “Y2K” in the margin of each one-stamp souvenir sheetlet, thereby laying the connotation VW = Beetle = bug = Y2K. The Beetle on the sheetlet illustrated is described as having “a pentium heart and a high speed modem engine”. Obviously a bit more than just a groovy car.
Several countries have used Y2K-related cancellation slogans or pictorial cancels in the run up to the new millennium and two of these have been shown here, one from Romania and one from the United States.
Many postal authorities, including South Africa, found it necessary to change the 2-digit year in their datestamps to a 4-digit year and a number of excellent articles on this subject regarding local datestamps have been published in SA Philatelist.
An enormous effort was spent by the IT industry in the late nineties to change the faulty programs, resulting in a smooth transition into the new millennium. In fact, the transition gave so few problems that many people began to wonder what it was all about. Had it all been a massive hoax? Or was it because the new millennium only began in 2001?
© Wobbe Vegter 2002
[ Published in: The South African Philatelist, December 2002, Vol. 78:6 ]