davidbrierley@lynx.northeastern.edu (10/05/89)
Here's an interesting passage that I found in _The Basic Apple IIc: A
Self-teaching Guide_ (pages 306-307):
We can't resist telling the story of where the term _bug_ comes from.
The MARK II comuter (one of the first modern comuters) used vacuum
tubes, and tubes generate a lot of heat. For this reason the
windows were left open in the computer room. Tubes burn out
frequently so a whole crew did nothing but test circuits and replace
tubes. One day when the machine was down...they discovered that a
moth had wandered in, been caught in a relay and, in so dong, had
caused a short circuit. The bug was removed, the relay reaired, and
the MARK II was up again. Grace Hooer (she is one of the most
important forces in the development of high-level languages)
remarked, "First successful debugging," and the moth was taped to
the log book. It remains there today.
[A photograph of the log book page (with moth) follows that passage.]
[P.S. Sorry for the typos - especially the p's.]unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) (10/05/89)
In article <memo.171079@lynx.northeastern.edu> davidbrierley@lynx.northeastern.edu writes: > We can't resist telling the story of where the term _bug_ comes from. > The MARK II comuter (one of the first modern comuters) used vacuum > tubes, and tubes generate a lot of heat. For this reason the > windows were left open in the computer room. Tubes burn out > frequently so a whole crew did nothing but test circuits and replace > tubes. One day when the machine was down...they discovered that a > moth had wandered in, been caught in a relay and, in so dong, had > caused a short circuit. The bug was removed, the relay reaired, and > the MARK II was up again. Grace Hooer (she is one of the most > important forces in the development of high-level languages) > remarked, "First successful debugging," and the moth was taped to > the log book. It remains there today. This isn't a very important addition, but you mentioned you made typos...But the lady's name is Grace Hopper... I believe she's a Rear Admiral or something like that. I don't know if she's still alive... (She's pretty old) Before I had heard about her in this context, I'd seen her on some PBS "learn about computers" show... She's also been on Late Night with David Letterman at least once and made the pretty well known statement that "one nanosecond equals 11 inches".. Obviously she means that that's the distance light travels in a nanosecond. If you want another book to hear a lot of other interesting stories about the early days/origins/etc of computers, get "The Digital Deli"...I hope that's the right name...It's a few years old... It has things on all the well known people like Woz & Jobs & Captain Crunch, etc, but also has other things... I believe it's written by "The Lunch Group" or some other name for a group of people. Very non-exact, eh? -- unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu
SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (10/09/89)
On Thu, 5 Oct 89 01:25:01 GMT you said: >In article <memo.171079@lynx.northeastern.edu> > davidbrierley@lynx.northeastern.edu writes: >> the MARK II was up again. Grace Hooer (she is one of the most >> important forces in the development of high-level languages) Specifically, Grace Hopper is the creator of COBOL (I've long since forgiven her for that :-) >> remarked, "First successful debugging," and the moth was taped to >> the log book. It remains there today. I've heard Admiral Grace tell that story several times. What SHE say is: "Someone asked me if we found the problem and I said we had. They asked what was wrong with it, and I said 'it had a bug in it.'" That "bug" by the way is on display in the Computer Museum in Boston. > This isn't a very important addition, but you mentioned you made >typos...But the lady's name is Grace Hopper... I believe she's a Rear >Admiral or something like that. I don't know if she's still alive... (She's >pretty old) Still very much alive, and only recently retired. The Navy tried to retire her years ago, and then found out they needed her worse than she needed them so they 'unretired' (and subsequently promoted) her (that's the only instance I've ever heard of like it -- there have been several others that the Navy brass tried and failed to retire - Adm Rickover is a recent famous example - but Adm Hopper is the only person I know of that's been brought back from retirement). >made the pretty well known statement that "one nanosecond equals 11 inches".. I've seen her SHOW an audience a 'nanosecond' (a piece of wire the length light would travel in a nanosecond), but I hadn't heard her translate its length into linear measure (the visual is MUCH more effective). Murph Sewall Vaporware? ---> [Gary Larson returns 1/1/90] Prof. of Marketing Sewall@UConnVM.BITNET Business School sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu [INTERNET] U of Connecticut {psuvax1 or mcvax }!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL [UUCP] (203) 486-5246 [FAX] (203) 486-2489 [PHONE] 41 49N 72 15W [ICBM] The opposite of artificial intelligence is genuine stupidity! -+- I don't speak for my employer, though I frequently wish that I could (subject to change without notice; void where prohibited)