Re: Y2K

["Jay Hanson" <j@qmail.com>]

From: Michael C. Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>
 >  If storage was the primary concern, then the date should have been
 >stored in binary. 2 bytes of year is worth 64k numbers. 6 digits of
 >day/month/year plus 6 digits of hour,minute,second would fit into 4
 >bytes if the Unix encoding was used.
 >
 >  So, I claim it wasn't "space" that constrained the problem, but
 >rather imagination. The systems were simply *NOT* engineered to last.


Perhaps the main reason for the short date was compatibility with
existing files.

I started on IBM accounting machines #402 & #407.

We stored dates in four columns on cards.  The year was hardwired
into the boards. We just rewired the board each year.

We migrated to IBM #1401.  It was a BCD machine  -- not binary.
 We had to maintain compatibility with our databases -- card files --
thus, short dates.

The cards for each year were stored separately, and we just changed
 the program each year.

Habits die hard, the average life of a program back then was about
three months.

Jay