First bug of history.

[CougTek]

I wasn't sure if this should be posted in the Computers or in the Pub & Brewery section. Here you go :

...in 1945 when engineers found a moth in Panel F, Relay #70 of the Harvard Mark II system. The computer was running a test of its multiplier and adder when the engineers noticed something was wrong. The moth was trapped, removed and taped into the computer's logbook with the words: "first actual case of a bug being found."

Source

I hope it lit up your day like it did to mine.

 

[Tea]

From now on, az part of my ongoing one-small-ape campaign to rephorm the englizh language, I zhall take your pozt on-board and phrom thiz moment on alwayz refer to "bugz" az "mothz".

Kind of appropriate, actually - hey, we all know what happenz iph you let mothz get into your winter wooliez ztorage cupboard, they eat holez in everything. Now I underztand! Obviouzly, Windowz ain't got bugz, it'z got mothz!

 

[mubs]

Obviouzly, Windowz ain't got bugz, it'z got mothz!

So then it should obviously be mothballed, shouldn't it, Orange-Haired one?

 

[Tannin]

I think what the incoherent one is trying to say is that a bug isn't just any small creature, a bug is a mamber of the order Hemiptera, and can be distinguished from other insects by having forewings with both membranous and hard portions in the adult form, and by having both piercing and sucking mouthparts in a long beak in both adult and nymph forms. Cl;ose to 70,000 species are known, including (among others) assassin bugs, bedbugs, water boatmen, pond skaters, aphids, cicadas, and leafhoppers.

Moths are not bugs. Like butterflies, moths are Lepidoptera, not Hemiptera.

 

[Tea]

Abzolutely right, Mubs![/i]

 

[Buck]

So, what is Windows infected with, Scarabaeidae Onitis viridulus or Onthophagus granulatus?

 

[Will Rickards]

As a comp sci student I was introduced to this story and also stories of the Eniac from someone who worked on it.

 

[i]

"Bug" in this context is a confusing word, and the quote about the Mark II is also confusing. I vaguely remember covering this in 2nd year computer science. You can read more at Wikipedia. It's confusing enough that I'm not even sure if I'm understanding the title of this discussion correctly, but anyway...

In a nutshell, prior to that Mark II incident in 1945 the term "bug" had been used before -- during the earliest days of computer development, and even decades before the first computer was produced -- to describe a fault or flaw of some kind. So the quote in this case is not a reference to "the first bug in history." It was the first documented actual, physical, organic, once-alive-critter-type bug in a computer, which is why it amused the operators at the time and they went to the lengths they did to record the occasion. But no, in the other sense, people had referred to bugs for a long time before that day.

 

[ddrueding]

Working at CompUSA in SF the tech department called me in one day. They'd taken a computer that wouldn't post from a customer downstairs and cracked it open. When they did, a pile of dead cockroaches spilled out onto the workbench. As the manager on duty I had to call the customer and inform him that we wouldn't be able to work on his computer. When I asked him where the computer had been stored, he said it had been in his study next to his bedroom. Those are bugs, right?

 

[i]

I said the first documented case, I did not say it was the last. I'm sure we all have rodent or bug stories.

 

[Adcadet]

I said the first documented case, I did not say it was the last. I'm sure we all have rodent or bug stories.

Please don't try to blame all bugs on RODENTS. Rodents have been blammed for centruries for everything from the Black Plaque to the rise of Microsoft.

 

[CougTek]

Yes but with Microsoft, it's true. That's why they call it The Vole.