Dungeon Master Forum

Someone told me a while ago where the expression, when talking about computers:"(there is a) bug " orginated.

back to the time when computers filled entire rooms.

If the computer/machine didn´t work, an insect had likely caused the malfunction (conductors, ect.). Hence the expression bug!.


The first hard disks were really big. I have seen one that is as large as a monitor. But there are much bigger ones.
The first one was apparently the IBM 305 RAMAC.
I think it is really fascinating, how much happened.
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-0316.jpg

Yeah, I've heard that story, too. I think I was told it was a moth that had gotten stuck in something important. Not sure if that specific detail is right, though! This is, like, third-hand story telling.

I'm pretty sure that's what it was. A woman in fact (I forget her name), removed a moth with a pair of tweezers that had been beaten to death by one of the valve switches in the computer.

Urban myth about the bug I believe...

we leared about her in computer science. and no.. it's not a myth.

"Grace Murray Hopper, a Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy, developed the first computer compiler in 1952. She coined the term "bug" (i.e., computer bug) upon discovering a moth that had jammed the works of an early computer. In 1991, Hopper became the first woman, as an individual, to receive the National Medal of Technology."

Basically at the time they used vaccume tubes to make the connections depending where they resided on the board determined the operations. A moth ended up completing the connection though and she discovered it's fried little body. soon afterwards it became a joke and now is just a term we all use.

moo

Weird -- I had heard so many different stories about the origin of 'bug' that I had always assumed the moth story was a myth!

i remember vaguely to have heard that the bug was an insect in the zuse II, the first computer at all.

See:

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/pers ... -hoppr.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_bug

The invention of the term is often erroneously attributed to Grace Hopper, who publicized the cause of a malfunction in an early electromechanical computer

I'm with you sucinum

http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/a/2003_09_09.htm

http://www.tafkac.org/faq2k/compute_86.html

Debunked: Grace Hopper coined the term "bug" as a result of this event.

The term "bug" had already been use for quite a while at the time of this incident (See below on Edison). However, this event has been oft quoted by many as evidence Grace Hopper coined the term "bug." Although that is not true, what the team did do was to put out the word they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the terminology "debugging a computer program."

All of this is consistent with the log entry. They say they found
the first 'actual' bug......implying that previous 'bugs' were errors
not caused by insects. Then they invented the word 'debugged'.

Grace Hopper... Grasshopper... coincidence ?

Nice insight !