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'Y2K Seems Like a Joke Now, But in 1999 People Were Freaking Out'

NPR remembers when the world "prepared for the impending global meltdown" that might've been, on December 31, 1999 — and the possible bug known as Y2K: The Clinton administration said that preparing the U.S. for Y2K was probably "the single largest technology management challenge in history."...

The bug threatened a cascade of potential disruptions — blackouts, medical equipment failures, banks shutting down, travel screeching to a halt — if the systems and software that helped keep society functioning no longer knew what year it was... Computer specialist and grassroots organizer Paloma O'Riley compared the scale and urgency of Y2K prep to telling somebody to change out a rivet on the Golden Gate Bridge. The date switchover rattled a swath of vital tech, including Wall Street trading systems, power plants and tools used in air traffic control. "Twenty-three million lines of code in the air traffic control system did seem a little more daunting, I will say, than I had probably anticipated," FAA Administrator Jane Garvey told NPR in 1998.

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