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First Computer Bug
From: ARPAVAX.sjk at Berkeley
To: i:unix-wizards@sri-unix
Subject: entomology
Via: Berkeley.ArpaNet; 23 Aug 81 6:15-PDT
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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