We’ve all been there: Our computer crashes, and we say there are “gremlins inside,” that the machine “geeked out,” or that it must have been “a bug.” And, often, simply rebooting solves the problem. But where the term “computer bug” come from, anyway? Learn the interesting history of this term in this edition of Tech Time Warp.
A moth, a logbook, a legacy
It turns out computer pioneer Grace Hopper plays a role. But while many think Hopper was the first to use the term, she actually just took it mainstream. At 3:45 p.m. on Sept. 9, 1947, Hopper and her team, hard at work developing the Mark II at Harvard University, found a moth stuck between the parts of a relay switch. They removed the moth and taped it in a logbook with the label “first actual case of bug being found.”
This workplace happening so amused Hopper and her colleagues because the term “bug” had been used by Thomas Edison and others for years to describe mysterious malfunctions. (Hopper had even been drawing cartoon bugs in her logbook.) Electrical engineers coined the term to describe “hard-to-find physical defects that hindered the operation of an electric device.” The Oxford English Dictionary includes a quote from the Pall Mall Gazette, dated March 11, 1889, where someone informed Mr. Edison had spent two nights uncovering a “bug” in his phonograph — a term used to describe a mysterious difficulty, as if an imaginary insect had hidden inside and caused the trouble.
Hopper recounted her use case in her public lectures, causing the term “computer bug” to enter the public lexicon. And the logbook found its way into the collection of the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.
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Photo: AleXandarM / Shutterstock
