As the clock ticked down to the year 2000, computer scientists around the world were fretting about the so-called “Y2K bug,” which many feared would wreak havoc on our heavily computerized society. In the late 1990s, a computer program created by Rex Widmer, a computer science graduate in 1972, put many minds at ease. Widmer’s Portfolio Analyzer could quickly and efficiently locate lines of code that needed to be changed before the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2000. The program could “munch through 100,000 programs – perhaps millions of lines of code – in a day,” he said in a 1998 interview. Unfortunately, Widmer never lived to see the success of his software. He died in a car accident in January 1999 while returning home to Shawnee Mission, Kansas, from a campus visit.
Share This Story
Spark a Memory?
Share your story! Fill out the form below to share your fondest memory or anecdote of S&T. If you'd prefer not typing, you can also share by phone at 833-646-3715 (833-Miner150).
A civil war fortress
As the Civil War raged on, the Union Army, following a defeat at Wilson’s Creek in southwest Missouri, fell back…
Cheryl D.S. Walker: engineer, curator, lawyer, poet
Cheryl D.S. Walker, who earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1986, has many talents and many pursuits. Dedicated…
Amanda (Kay Hansen) and Chris Byrd
It was a fire drill at TJ Residence Hall in September 1999 that first brought Amanda (Kay Hansen) and Chris…
Jack Ridley: a humanist among engineers
Jack Ridley, who won many teaching awards during his career, describes the circumstances he faced as a new...
Building a legacy of mechanical engineering
A registered professional engineer, John Toomey, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering in 1949 and 1951, founded…
Communications entrepreneur and social engineer
Kwesi Sipho Umoja, EE’67, says that Dr. Martin Luther King’s death had a profound effect on his perception of tomorrow….