COMPUTER DATE GLITCH IS LIKELY TO COST BILLIONS OF DOLLARS

When the geniuses who developed the first computers were hard at work inventing machines that could do lightning-speed calculations, they apparently didn't think their new electronic brains would last long. Along the way, these mid-century pioneers only allowed two digits for the years used in date calculations -- the last two digits.

Thus, when the year 2000 rolls around, most computers -- generations removed from those first high-speed calculators -- won't know what to do. Of all the things computers today can do, they can't recognize two zeroes as a date.

The alarm over how to fix this seemingly minor problem is growing daily as the calendar moves onward toward the end of this century. Most computer users are aware of the problem, but they have no idea what to do about it. That is left for the geniuses. And so far, those folks don't have such a simple solution.

As a matter of fact, the cost of nursing the thousands of computers through this two-digit crisis is now being estimated in the billions of dollars. The anticipated cost for the federal government alone was recently puts at $2.3 billion -- and some computer experts scoffed over that amount as being way too low.

Think about it: Just when there appears to be some bipartisan political cooperation on balancing the federal budget and finding ways to make income and spending match up, along comes a real doozie of a computer glitch that could cost billions of dollars.

But the federal government's cost of fixing the computer date problem is only a fraction of the total cost. State and local governments also will have to deal with this. Missouri estimates the tab for updating state computers at various agencies will be more than $50 million.

And then there is the private sector. Almost every business these days relies on computers, and these electronic marvels also will need a programming update to account for the change in centuries.

Somewhere, there is an aging math teacher who scorns even a hand-held calculator who is smiling to himself and saying, "See, you should have learned how to do work with pencil and paper. It could have saved a bundle."

That's true. But computers have opened so many other doors in every field of endeavor that surely no one wants to go back to the pencil-and-paper days. On the other hand, no one knows how much all of this is going to wind up costing either.