Re: Moth in relay! Urban myth?

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#1257

From: John Woods
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 1990 00:22

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In article <1990Feb4.0...@agate.berkeley.edu>, b...@alfa.berkeley.edu (Brad Sherman) writes:
> I have heard a number of versions of a story about a moth
> flying into a relay of an early electro-mechanical computer.
> The moth gets taped into the system log book.
> The use of "bug" meaning computer problem is born.

Grace Murray Hopper (Madame COBOL) is the source of that story.  Somewhere
around here, there used to be photocopy of a photo of the actual log page,
with moth, but it has disappeared.  Adm. Hopper believe that was the source
of the term "bug", but others have noted that "bug" was used to describe
problems in transatlantic phone cables sometime before that.
-- 
John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (508) 626-1101
...!decvax!frog!john, john@frog.UUCP, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, j...@eddie.mit.edu

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Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!lll-winken!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!attctc!frog!john
From: john@frog.UUCP (John Woods)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Moth in relay! Urban myth?
Message-ID: <11918@frog.UUCP>
Date: 8 Feb 90 00:22:00 GMT
References: <1990Feb4.072343.7821@agate.berkeley.edu>
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Organization: Misanthropes-R-Us
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Posted: Thu Feb  8 01:22:00 1990
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