Re: Moth in relay! Urban myth?

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#1240

From: zw... Johnny Zweig
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 1990 07:03

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My understanding was that the term "bug" came from telephony, in which the
buzzing noises heard on bad lines was jokingly attributed to bugs buzzing
in the lines.  Maybe this, in turn, comes from the use in audio recording
technology cited by the OED -- namely, bugs making buzzing sounds on shoddy
recordings.

The 1945 log-book was a good joke since they actually *found* a real live
(rather, dead) bug that was causing the problem.  Hacker humor.

-Johnny Bug

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Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!jarthur!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!zweig
From: zw...@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (Johnny Zweig)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Moth in relay! Urban myth?
Message-ID: <1990Feb5.070341.18156@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 5 Feb 90 07:03:41 GMT
References: <1990Feb4.072343.7821@agate.berkeley.edu> <V~47W$@rpi.edu>
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Posted: Mon Feb  5 08:03:41 1990
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