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With memory as expensive as it was in the early days of modern computing, it was a common practice to save storage space by using two-digit years.
The '''Y2K''' problem was identified in the late 1990s by computer scientists.
The '''Y2K''' problem was identified in the late 1990s by computer scientists who observed that many dates were stored with two-digit years. This leads to the problem of deciding whether a date recording as "12/25/80" refers to Christmas 1880 or Christmas 1980.
A two-digit year is recorded by leaving out the first two digits, seen as redundant. For systems which use only a short range of dates, say 1960 through 1990, this seemed to make sense. An event which took place in "75" could not have occurred in 2075 (far in the future) or in 1875 (the distant past). With memory as expensive as it was in the early days of modern computing, it was a common practice to save storage space by using two-digit years.