A Banner Year
Some call it the first year of a new century and/or millennium, some call it the last year of the old (the U.S. Naval Observatory, for one; see www.usno.navy.mil). Either way, it's the infamous Y2K, the year of the zeros replaced the nines and the computers were supposed to break down under the burden of change.

Instead, 2000 has been a year of unparalleled prosperity and productivity, and it was a year of another record for exhibitors and booths at the Pittsburgh Conference. A total of 1280 companies set up their booths in the cavernous 8.3-acre Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, and more than 27,000 chemists and businesspeople came to partake of the bounty of technology.

[First slide show includes 13 pictures. Click on arrow to scroll.]

The 3304 booths of Pittcon 2000, representing the record total of 1280 companies, were spread across more than 350,000 square feet of floor space in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. As this photo album shows, the total scene was a technological feast for the mind and senses that can only be compared to trying to eat one’s way through all the menus of all the Big Easy’s fine restaurants. These pictures are a relatively few images of the five days of Pittcon, but they speak for themselves.—Randall Frey

[Second slide show contains 30 pictures.]

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Photographs by Rusty Cowart (Rusty Cowart Photography, Inc., New Orleans) and Jessica Navay, senior photojournalism student, Loyola University, New Orleans.