27 lines
1.3 KiB
Plaintext
27 lines
1.3 KiB
Plaintext
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Date: 23 Aug 1981 05:38:25-PDT
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From: ARPAVAX.sjk at Berkeley
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To: i:unix-wizards@sri-unix
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Subject: entomology
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Via: Berkeley.ArpaNet; 23 Aug 81 6:15-PDT
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>From network Fri Aug 21 19:43:17 1981
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Subject: origin of bug
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Newsgroups: msgs
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Ever wondered about the origins of the term "bugs" as applied to computer
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technology? U.S. Navy Capt. Grace Murray Hopper has firsthand explanation.
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The 74-year-old captain, who is still on active duty, was a pioneer in
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computer technology during World War II. At the C.W. Post Center of
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Long Island University, Hopper told a group of Long Island public school
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administrators that the first computer "bug" was a real bug -- a moth.
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At Harvard one August night in 1945, Hopper and her associates were working
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on the "granddaddy" of modern computers, the Mark I. "Things were going
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badly; there was something wrong in one of the circuits of the long
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glass-enclosed computer," she said. "Finally, someone located the
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trouble spot and, using ordinary tweezers, removed the problem, a two-inch
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moth. From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it
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had bugs in it." Hopper said that when the veracity of her story was
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questioned recently, "I referred them to my 1945 log book, now in the
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collection of Naval Surface Weapons Center, and they found the remains of
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that moth taped to the page in question."
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