Text File

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 <jgoerzen@complete.org> 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.