[TUHS] Origin of "bug" (was: Grace Hopper)

[grog@lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1939 bytes --]

On Sunday, 10 December 2017 at 10:17:54 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Dec 2017, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
>
>>> She coined the term "debugging" when she extracted a moth from a set of
>>> relay contacts from a computer (the Harvard Mk I) and wrote "computer
>>> debugged" in the log, taping the deceased Lepidoptera in there as well.
>>
>> See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugging#Origin_of_the_term which
>> indicates that "bug" and "debugging" had been around as technical terms
>> long before that incident.
>
> I need to investigate that further (I'd hate to spread misinformation,
> which is why I enjoy being corrected, esp. in public).

I was going to pipe up here, but I wasn't sure if it would be
interesting.  The Oxford English Dictionary has a first reference to
in this sense in 1875:

   5. orig. U.S.

   a. A defect or fault in a machine (esp. an electrical or electronic
   one), or in a process, etc.


   1875 Operator 15 Aug. 5/1 The biggest ‘bug’ yet has been discovered
        in the U.S. Hotel Electric Annunciator.

   1889 Pall Mall Gaz. 11 Mar. 1/1 Mr. Edison, I was informed, had
   	been up the two previous nights discovering ‘a bug’ in his
   	phonograph—an expression for solving a difficulty, and
   	implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside
   	and is causing all the trouble.

Grace Hopper's bug doesn't get a mention.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171210/555e472b/attachment-0001.sig>