Xref: utzoo comp.arch:19659 alt.folklore.computers:7739
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From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: The term Bug
Summary: The same mistake again
Message-ID: <2351@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 90 13:09:03 GMT
References: <7298@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> <127@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>
Sender: news@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
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In article <127@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>, lynch@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Richard Lynch) writes:
> [Numerous postings about Grace Hopper and the term bug not included.]
> I heard *SOMEWHERE* that the first bug was in ENIAC or UNIVAC, and was, in 
> fact a bug that got into the machine and was fried by the wires and whose 
> carcass maintained contact, thus short-circuiting the machine.  I 
> sincerely hope that this is true, since it IS the story I've told to 
> several hundred high school students. :-)

I personally heard the term used before there was an electronic computer.

Someone in some group in the past posted that the OED traced the use of
the term "bug" for industrial defect to Edison in the last century.
--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)   {purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!hrubin(UUCP)


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