Computer bug

A computer bug is any problem with a computer, whether caused by software or hardware.

The term "bug" was in use among engineers and repairmen well before the dawn of the Computer Age.

• American engineers have been calling small flaws in machines "bugs" for over a century. Thomas Edison talked about bugs in electrical circuits in the 1870s. When the first computers were built during the early 1940s, people working on them found bugs in both the hardware of the machines and in the programs that ran them.^[1]

Yet, credit for popularizing the term is generally accorded to computer pioneer Grace Hopper, who it is said:

• ... traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. The bug was carefully removed and taped to a daily log book. Since then, whenever a computer has a problem, it's referred to as a bug.

It is worth noting that the first generation of computers used vacuum tubes. These vacuum tubes used filaments to heat the cathodes. The heat generated by the many tubes attracted insects which liked warm resting places. Also, these tubes ran at a voltage (typically 100 volts and above) much greater than today's CPU and memory chips.

If an insect were to make contact with "ground" and a circuit with high voltage, the insect would fry in place. Occasionally the insect would then be a new "circuit" which sent a signal somewhere that a signal should not be going.

The error generated would then be blamed on (literally) a computer bug. The term stayed in the vocabulary when vacuum tubes were discontinued in favor of transistors, then integrated circuits.

References

1. ^ "Log Book With Computer Bug". National Museum of American History. http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object.cfm?key=35&objkey=30. 

See also

• Software bug

External links

• Moth in the machine: Debugging the origins of "bug" - Did Grace Hopper really invent the term "bug" to describe software errors? - Computerworld staff - September 5, 2011

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