macrakis@harvard.ARPA (Stavros Macrakis) (05/29/85)
> ... 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 > Reprinted by `INC' Magazine This is a lot of rubbish. You will discover (if you bother to look in a historical dictionary), that the words `bug' and `debug' had been used long before the Eniac (and actually this little piece of folklore goes back to the Harvard Mark I, I believe) to mean a problem, and getting rid of the problem. And of course the message does not belong in net.general (twice!). -s
jdd@magic.ARPA (05/31/85)
> "'Eniac', the first important digital computer, never lived > up to its potential, because tubes kept burning out in the > middle of its computations.... > ...The 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'." From "A Supplement to The Oxford English Dictionary" (1972): bug, s.b.[2] Add: ... 4. In various slang uses. ... b. A defect or fault in a machine, plan or the like. orig. U.S. 1889 Pall Mall Gaz. 11 Mar 1/1 Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering `a bug' in his phonograph--an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble. 1935 Jrnl. R. Aeornaut. Soc XXXIX. 43 Casting, forging and riveting are processes hundreds of years old, and, to use an Americanism, `have the bugs ironed out of them'.... Cheers, John ("Mr. Know-It-All") DeTreville DEC SRC, Palo Alto
abs@rlvd.UUCP (Andrew Smith) (06/06/85)
I went to a talk given by Grace Hopper (the mother of COBOL! ) a few years back, and she claims to have created the phrase in the early days of computing. Here is her story : She was working on a relay computer which used to get very hot and they opened the windows one day in order to cool the machine down. Well, apparently all these insects flew in and got caught between the contacts of the relays. They were removed, and so the computer was 'Debugged'. I don't believe this myself. Anybody out there heard this story ? Andrew Smith. IKBS Group, Informatics Division, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, OXON. UK. ..!mcvax!ukc!rlvd!abs
wjr@frog.UUCP (Bill Richard) (06/07/85)
[bug] > I went to a talk given by Grace Hopper (the mother of COBOL! ) > a few years back, and she claims to have created the phrase > in the early days of computing. Here is her story : > > (story about bug in relay) > > I don't believe this myself. Anybody out there heard this story ? > > Andrew Smith. Yes, and it seems to be a true story. I have heard it from several sources but the only one I have handy at the moment is a copy of a page from the first issue of the 'Whole Earth Software Review'. Which, under the heading 'The First Bug' quotes Grace Hopper, writing in the 'Annals of the History of Computing', about how in the summer of '45 while trying to get the Navy's Mark II relay logic computer working they found a moth in one of the relays, removed it and taped it into the logbook. She adds, "Now, Commander Howard Aiken had a habit of coming into the room and saying, 'Are you making any numbers?' From then on if we weren't making any numbers, we told him that we were debugging the computer. To the best of my knowledge that's where it started." Below the text is a photo of the logbook page showing a moth taped to it and the entry, 1545 <B> Relay #70 Panel F <U> moth in relay <G> First actual case of bug being found. The article says that the logbook page is preserved at the Naval Museum at the Naval Surface Weapons Center in Dalghren VA. Now I am aware that someone posted a citation from a dictionary showing that phrases like "Still a few bugs left in it." were in use at an earlier date and the note in the log ("First actual case ...") seems to indicate that Hopper and her teammates were aware of this usage, but this may indeed be the first time it was applied to a computer. Also her claim is more specificly to the invention of the word "debugging", as opposed to the earlier phrase "Getting the bugs out" and that I can certainly believe. -- ---- William J. Richard @ Charles River Data Systems 983 Concord St. Framingham, MA 01701 Tel: (617) 626-1112 uucp: ...!decvax!frog!wjr
daleske@cbdkc1.UUCP ( John Daleske ) (06/12/85)
Yes! I have heard the Hopper story twice now. She claims to have entered the bug into the log with tape. Another story she tells is how to visualize "time" within the computer. She sent a sailor our to get a milisecond one time. The sailor came back with a large roll of wire. Then, they made some microseconds. The first time she told the story she held up some nanoseconds (9 to 12" wires depending upon the propagation of the electrons through the particular wire) which she gave out at the end of the speech. The second time she told the story, she also had the sailor get a pepper grinder to make picoseconds relating to the microcycle times of some of the machines now out! John Daleske ...ihnp4!cbosgd!cbdkc1!daleske