Buffeted by a Millennial Time Warp

Re: “The Millennium Is Upon Us, but the Party’s Already Over,” Dec. 22: Former Times editor-publisher Harrison Gray Otis bravely took on the millennium question in 1883 when two readers naively asked: “In what century will Jan. 1, 1900 be?” His initial answer--”In the 19th century, obviously”--was discarded when a friend convinced him that the first century ran from “1 to 100, not including the 100, and the 20th from 1900 to 2000, not including the 2000.”

After Otis changed his mind, the letters column was overwhelmed by comments from readers on either side of the argument.

We don’t know how the argument ended in 1883 because most copies of the paper for December 1883 are lost, but at some point Otis changed his mind again, for his editorial on Jan. 1, 1900, began: “Upon this, the first morning which has dawned in the last year of the nineteenth century. . . .” On Jan. 1, 1901, he wrote that the 19th century “passed into history last night with the stroke of the midnight hour. We stand, today, within the portals of the twentieth century.” On Page 1 of the second section stood a scantily clad youngster with top hat who greeted Times readers with “Good Morning To All--I’m The 20th Century.”

More recently, in advance of last year’s insanity, both the paper’s style manual and the Science editor declared in print that the new millennium would begin Jan. 1, 2001. Somehow all that was lost as The Times was swept up in the millennium madness at the end of 1999.

RALPH E. SHAFFER

Professor emeritus

Cal Poly Pomona

Author of “Letters From the

People, 1881-89,” an anthology

of letters to The Times