Aucbvax.2808
fa.unix-wizards
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards
Tue Aug 25 19:44:29 1981
entomology of the term bug
>From MAP@MIT-AI Mon Aug 24 08:40:22 1981
There is some disagreement on the origins of the term in computer
science, it was definitely in use BEFORE Grace Hopper used it in the
"1945 log book". The following paragraph is a copy of a message I
sent to another mailng list when it discussed this same topic back in
the early part of the summer:
The term "bug" was first used in the telephone company. The technical
types got asked about why certain lines seemed to have excessive amounts
of buzzing and so on and after a while they decided it was beyond them
and so they repoorted that the sound came from "Bugs in the cable".
This was presumably so difficult to fix that it wasn't worth wowrking on.
The usage spread throughout the system and got carried over to the
computer area via technicians using it in other areas.
If there is sufficient interest I can recover the other mailing lists
discussion of bugs for people to look at.
For those who need to be reminded the rest of this message is a copy
of the original to which I reply:
Date: 23 Aug 1981 05:38:25-PDT
From: ARPAVAX.sjk at Berkeley
Via: Berkeley.ArpaNet; 23 Aug 81 6:15-PDT
>From network Fri Aug 21 19:43:17 1981
Subject: origin of bug
Newsgroups: msgs
Ever wondered about the origins of the term "bugs" as applied to computer
technology? U.S. Navy Capt. Grace Murray Hopper has firsthand explanation.
The 74-year-old captain, who is still on active duty, was a pioneer in
computer technology during World War II. At the C.W. Post Center of
Long Island University, Hopper told a group of Long Island public school
administrators that the first computer "bug" was a real bug -- a moth.
At Harvard one August night in 1945, Hopper and her associates were working
on the "granddaddy" of modern computers, the Mark I. "Things were going
badly; there was something wrong in one of the circuits of the long
glass-enclosed computer," she said. "Finally, someone located the
trouble spot and, using ordinary tweezers, removed the problem, a two-inch
moth. From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it
had bugs in it." Hopper said that when the veracity of her story was
questioned recently, "I referred them to my 1945 log book, now in the
collection of Naval Surface Weapons Center, and they found the remains of
that moth taped to the page in question."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <
[email protected]>
of
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/
This Usenet Oldnews Archive
article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:
1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.
2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:
The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996
Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.
