Creepy-Crawlies in Your Machines
~~ by Kathy Jacobs
When someone thinks about a computer problem today, they
are likely to complain about bugs in the software or hardware. Did you
ever wonder why? One explanation provided by computer historians is that
actual bugs were found in an old military machine in the mid-1940's.
Some Background
In the early days of computing, computers were room-sized masses of
circuit boards and wires. Instead of programmers creating programs that
could be run over and over, engineers wrote lengthy instructions for
wiring the circuits to evaluate the data and find the answer to a problem.
These instructions were then passed to clerks who would change the
existing wires and set the inputs to the first set of data.
Many things could go wrong between the engineer's conception of the
solution and the execution of the computer problem. The engineer could
have developed the wrong solution or could have a logic problem in the
solution. The clerk could have wired the diagrams incorrectly. One of the
boards could have overheated or cracked. All of these were likely causes
of problems.
Buggy Computers
However, the very first problem reported was an actual physical bug.
According to Grace Hopper, a computer pioneer, the first bug she found was
in the Mark I. A moth had actually flown into the computer and gotten to
the wires. That bug was saved in a 1945 logbook, which now can be found in
the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC.
Other bug examples include:
- A caterpillar that hatched inside a machine in a seldom changed area
- A fly zapped by the current running through the wires or across the
boards.
- A creepy crawler entangled in the wires
- Spider webs in little used areas of the computers
- In each of these cases, the wires would short out and the boards or
wires would need to be replaced.
When the bugs were found, the clerks would have to stop work, gather up
the invader or invaders, and run a full check on the machine. Since these
occurrences cost a lot of time and were frequent, people continued calling
computer errors bugs.
Other Origins of the Word
Other computer historians have disagreed with the claim that this was
the beginning of the use of the term. Some of them attribute the word to
Thomas Edison, who was known to spend hours working on his inventions.
However, it is most likely that the word is even older than that. There
is a German phrase "bugbear" which has been long used for an error which
is hard to track down or solve.
No matter how the term started, we should all be glad that our current
computer bugs are of the software and hardware kind rather than the live
kind!
Kathryn Jacobs,
Microsoft MVP, PowerPoint and OneNote
Get PowerPoint answers at
http://www.powerpointanswers.com
Get OneNote answers at
http://www.onenoteanswers.com/
Cook anything outdoors with
http://www.outdoorcook.com
Kathy is a trainer, writer, Girl Scout, parent, and whatever else there is
time for.
I believe life is meant to be lived. But, if we live without
making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived.
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