When Millennium Starts? Ask Earlier Generation

“Layoffs, Y2K Bugs and Costly Smokes” [Dec. 27] states that “. . . nit-pickers will argue that the millennium doesn’t really start for two years. . . .”

I am neither a nit-picker nor am I arguing. I refer you to an editorial cartoon published by the Chicago Daily News, dated Dec. 31, 1900, in which an allegorical Father Time figure is about to pass the lamp to the new 20th century. A calendar on the wall notes the date: Jan. 1, 1901.

And a generation ago, author Arthur C. Clarke wrote a famous novel about a new era of humanity coinciding with the start of a new millennium. The title: “2001.”

Apparently the people of the past had no difficulty counting from 1 to 100, unlike the present-day media, who, it seems, would have the 20th century be the first one in history to contain only 99 years.

LES KOPEL

Camarillo