Mickey Starling
editor@riverbendnews.org
Since the day my first computer arrived in the late 90s, something has always bugged me. At first, it was the cranky dialup method of connecting to the internet. Those quirky noises and the multitude of failed attempts to reach the web were often the source of what was bugging me.
As time slowly creeped by, files were accidentally deleted, systems would crash, disks were damaged and my love/hate relationship with the computer was born. It seems I could never get the bugs out.
Debugging computers is now a flourishing industry. One thing is certain where computers are concerned, something will go wrong. But, how did bugs get into the descriptive lore of computer malfunctions?
As it turns out, a team at Harvard University, led by Grace Hopper, not to be confused with grasshopper, was working on one of the earliest computers in 1947, called Mark II. These electromechanical wonders were being used for ballistic calculations at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Va.
They were relay-based machines, utilizing around 13,000 relays and paper tape/punched cards for input, which actually makes me appreciate dialup.
Somewhere along the way, the machine stopped working. The team began removing the panels to locate the problem, which turned out to be a moth that fluttered into one of the relays. The fried remains were taped into a logbook, and some genius coined the phrase “computer bug,” which has become the standard slang term for all our computer-related troubles.