00.30 — 05.30

Introduction. The run-up to the year 2000. From superstition to science, and the idea of a ‘technological armageddon’. Apocalyptic cults, the Millennium Dome, and a ‘digital Utopia’.

05.30 — 17.55

The history of the calendar, and the calendar as a communication system. The inaccuracies of the lunar calendar. The River Nile: a clue to the invention of the solar calendar. Multi-calendar societies. Caesar as a great reformer of the calendar used in the Roman Empire. Leap years and variable-length months. Great emperors steal days from February to add to July and August!

17.55 — 23.45

The ancient use of tables to calculate the date of Easter. The birth of Christ set as AD 1, and evidence of a miscalculation of the exact date by as much as four years.

23.45 — 28.40

The thousand-year cycle. A comparison of events in AD 1000 and AD 2000. Millennia and religious conversions. The ‘Rapture’ when the converted are taken from the Earth. The potential for chaos in a ‘post-Rapture’ world.

28.40 — 31.30

The introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 in much of Europe, but not until 1752 in England.

31.30 — 35.50

The Royal Greenwich Observatory and the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. The move from planetary cycles to atomic cycles for timekeeping, and the idea of leap seconds.

35.50 — 42.15

The psychology of zeros — signs, cults and mass suicides. The web as the medium of choice for apocalyptic figures. Premillennial tension.

42.15 — end

Date-related computer bugs and their potential consequences. The millennium as the biggest event of our imaginations!