It ’s an oft - touted snippet of cyber folklore that the first electronic computer bug was literally a bug . A squashed moth , to be precise . Like many anecdotes that find their way into modern fable , it seem that this story was founded in truth , but some re - tattle of the story may have got the details a bit muddled .
Here ’s how the story goes , according to scholarFred R Shapiro : On September 9 , 1945 ( some source say 1947 ) , Harvard engineers were working on the Mark II , also known as the Aiken Relay Calculator , an electromechanical information processing system that was being tested for the US Navy .
One of the bright sparks working on this projection wasGrace Hopper , a track - blazing computer groundbreaker and US Navy rear full admiral who holds the exceptionally uncommon honor of being a mathematician who has a warship discover after them .
The team of computer scientist noticed that Mark II was playing up . After taking a flavour at the hardware , they saw that the glitch was being because of an unfortunate moth that had become sandwiched in between relay 70 of panel F.
The frazzle moth was removed and Cooper pose the specimen into the day ’s logarithm tabloid using some sticky - tap along with the notation : “ First literal case of a glitch being found . ”
In 1988 , the log book wasrediscoveredat the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum in Virginia and the moth was still tape to the tabloid , perhaps a short stale but otherwise fine .
This part of the narrative seems to be true . At least , there ’s no reason to seize it was made up . However , some rendering of the story go one further and suggest the term “ computer hemipteron ” was directly derive from this incident . This certainly is n’t the case .
The term “ bug ” was used by none other than Thomas Edison as far back as 1878 when he was writing to fellow inventor Theodore Puskas . His letterreportedlyreads : “ Bugs – as such little geological fault and difficulties are called – show themselves and calendar month of acute watching , survey and confinement are requisite before commercial success or failure is sure as shooting strive . ”
likewise , Shapiro indite that the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary set the noun “ hemipteron ” as “ a defect or blame in a machine , program , or the like . ” The dictionary definition mention a newsprint from 1889 that says : “ Mr Edison … had been up the two previous night discovering a ‘ glitch ’ in his record player — an face for solving a difficulty , and implying that some imaginary insect had release itself indoors and is causing all the worry . ”
So , it appears that the word “ bug ” has been used to describe an unexpected hiccup , especially regarding machinery or electronics , for over half a century before the infamous case of the Mark II figurer .
It ’s also impossible to say whether this anecdote could be reckon the first computer bug . for certain , computers were very much in their babyhood in the 1940s , but there ’s no apprisal whether this bug was the first time a calculator error had been call a bug .
Nevertheless , few would argue that the caption of the crushed moth is n’t a neat news report that deserves retelling , wherever the precise truth lie .
[ H / T : Victtor Ciferrion Twitter ]
