jsk@druor.UUCP (KennedyJS) (05/28/85)
"'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