Elroy Dimson

Money was kind of free at the end of 1999, expecting 2000 to come along.

And the global head was our own knowledge of the research that others were doing and a practitioner who was thinking globally.

And we liked that idea.

We worked through the run-up to New Year 2000 on producing a book which was privately published.

First, we had a number of countries.

But as we reached the end of 1999, we found that it was creeping up towards 10.

The 10th was actually at quite a late stage.

10 countries for which we had accumulated 100 years.

And we thought, that's a millennium of data.

And so the millennium year came along.

Our work got a great deal of publicity.

But one of the things which nobody had noticed at the time was, when do you celebrate a birthday?

So people were talking about the new millennium as a thousandth birthday.

Actually, you have a birthday.

You are one year old when you're into your next year birthday.

So birthdays actually are calculated differently.

And so people pointed this out.

And by that time, we discovered data for lots of other countries.

And the suggestion was, well, we should have Millennium Book 2 for the real millennium.

And the real millennium was once there were 1,000 years behind us.