A myth come true
Patrick Lavoie
anti-bug informatique
August 23rd 2005
Copyright © 2005
The first computer bug was discovered in 1945 by Grace Murray Hopper at the Harvard University. Grace Hopper is also the mother of the COBOL language. The Mark II Aiken Calculator (a somewhat primitive computer) that she was using experienced some troubles. The source of these problems were, in fact, a moth being stuck between contacts of relays. The first computer bug was indeed a real insect! The moth was removed and added to a log book and was identified as the first computer bug ever found. When the operators removed the moth, they debugged the problem.
Until 1991, the moth and the log book were exposed at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum in Dahlgren, Virginia. The Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum then donated the log entry to the History of American Technology Museum which is part of the Smithsonian Museum.
But the term is older than that. The term was already being used to describe problems related to the electronic part of radars during the World War II. Thomas Edisson also employed the term to indicate some industrial faults. It was also used in the New Catechism of Electricity book back in 1896. The word bug designated any faults or problem within electric connections. The term was also used during the telegraphy era when erroneous morse sequences were sent using semi-automatic keyers. Those semi-automatic keyers were called "bugs". One of the most popular keyers brand used the graphic of a beetle.
Today, a computer bug indicates both hardware and software problem of a computer. Nevertheless, the term is not limited to the computer or electronic domain. A bug simply defines something that does not work as expected or does not work at all. The term debugging is frequently used; it is the process of fixing the problem. But bug are obviously not insects!
References
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Hopper.Danis.html
http://www.ticam.utexas.edu/~organism/bug.html
http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/first_computer_bug.htm
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