That penny thing was something the computer programming staff would use as an example at the Purdue extension I went to years ago and it was based on a true story. And I recall all the panic around fixing Y2K issues that cropped up. There were some programmers that got a bit lazy and only used 1 digit for storing variables dealing with years! Either that or it could have been a limitation on some of those old languages like assembly.
I wonder if Reed and Victor had to study COBOL when they were in college?