A quarter of a century ago, the threat of the Y2K bug shook businesses and communities alike, in Alsace and the rest of the world. A look back at this New Year, between fears of an IT cataclysm and hope for a utopian future.
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A quarter of a century has already passed since the world left the 1900s. As the New Year 2000 approaches, an abstract, almost mystical threat anguishes society: the “bug”. A fear that the world’s computer dating systems won’t be able to get from 1999 to 2000, and that all technology will stop working at midnight sharp.
Satellites deviating from their orbit, planes falling in mid-flight, money disappearing from banks… The media of the time relayed this computer panic. To the point that businesses and local authorities are taking preventive measures.
The SNCF announces that it plans to stop the circulation of all its trains from 11:55 p.m. to 12:15 a.m. Banque Populaire ATMs will be out of service until 12:04 a.m. The Peugeot site in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin) will turn off all of its installations on December 31, with a restart scheduled for January 5.
At the Fessenheim power plant, at the Électrcité de Strasbourg headquarters and in the Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin prefectures, teams are mobilized all night.
At the headquarters of the Banque Populaire d’Alsace, computer scientists stayed up all night on December 31, 2000.
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© Olivier Stéphan / France Télévisions
To demonstrate the vigilance of companies, France 3 Alsace spends the night of the 31st at the Crédit Mutuel headquarters in Strasbourg, where a team of IT specialists will keep watch until 8 a.m.
“The withdrawal authorization center was overbooked yesterday [le 30 décembre]lasting 50 minutes in total,” tells our journalist, Remedios Sanchez Pascual. The cause was the Alsatian customers who came massively to draw cash.
But on New Year’s Eve, no notable “bug” disrupted the bank’s activity. “This will remain the non-computer bug of the year 2000,” concludes the journalist.
This will remain the computer “non-bug” of the year 2000
Remedios Sanchez-Pascual, journalist France 3 Alsace
The transition to the year 2000 is not a fear for everyone. In Strasbourg, tens of thousands of young and old come together to celebrate this leap into the future.
The Alsatian capital was forced to cancel the burning of the cathedral because of storm Lothar, but there is no shortage of entertainment at Place Kléber. Latin American concert, popular ball, rolls and “Gate of the year 2000”, which thousands of Alsatians symbolically cross. And a quarter of a century ago, fireworks were set off by the people of Strasbourg themselves.
For many, the year 2000 heralds a new, better world. Sandra, an Alsatian aged 30 at the time, remembers: “I thought it was going to be like a science fiction movie: cars that fly, things that glow… There was a lot of hope in the year 2000.”
