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."

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 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.