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From: jsk@druor.UUCP (KennedyJS)
Newsgroups: net.general
Subject: The origin of 'debugging'
Message-ID: <718@druor.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-May-85 11:27:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: druor.718
Posted: Tue May 28 11:27:12 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 30-May-85 01:25:39 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 19



"'Eniac', the first important digital computer, never lived
up to its potential, because tubes kept burning out in the 
middle of its computations.  The Army... finally stationed 
a platoon of soldiers manning grocery baskets filled with 
tubes at strategic pionts around the computer; this proveded 
little help, because the engineers could never tell which of 
the machine's  18,000 vacuum tubes had burned out at any par-
ticular time.  The warmth and soft light of the tubes also 
attracted moths, which would fly through ENIAC's innards and 
cause short circuits.  Ever since, the process of fixing 
computer problems has been known as 'debugging'."

                                The Chip by T.R. Reid
				Copyrignt 1985

				Reprinted by `INC' Magazine
				June 1985