========================================================================
                               About Bugs
========================================================================

Recently I found an interesting essay about computer bugs in the ddd
source code [1]:


// About Bugs
// ==========
//
// :bug: n.  An unwanted and unintended property of a program or
// piece of hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction.
// Antonym of {feature}.  Examples: "There's a bug in the editor: 
// it writes things out backwards."  "The system crashed because of  
// a hardware bug."  "Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs"
// (i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality problems).
//
// Historical note: Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer  
// better known for inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in  
// which a technician solved a {glitch} in the Harvard Mark II
// machine by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts
// of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in
// its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was
// careful to admit, she was not there when it happened).  For many
// years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug 
// in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface
// Warfare Center (NSWC).  The entire story, with a picture of the 
// logbook and the moth taped into it, is recorded in the "Annals
// of the History of Computing", Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1981),
// pp. 285--286.
//
// The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads "1545
// Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay.  First actual case of bug being
//  found".  This wording establishes that the term was already
// in use at the time in its current specific sense -- and Hopper
// herself reports that the term `bug' was regularly applied to
// problems in radar electronics during WWII.
//
// Indeed, the use of `bug' to mean an industrial defect was already  
// established in Thomas Edison's time, and a more specific and rather
// modern use can be found in an electrical handbook from 1896 
// ("Hawkin's New Catechism of Electricity", Theo. Audel & Co.)
// which says: "The term `bug' is used to a limited extent to
// designate any fault or trouble in the connections or working of 
// electric apparatus."  It further notes that the term is "said to  
// have originated in quadruplex telegraphy and have been transferred
// to all electric apparatus."
//
// The latter observation may explain a common folk etymology of the 
// term; that it came from telephone company usage, in which "bugs in
// a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines.  Though this
// derivation seems to be mistaken, it may well be a distorted memory
// of a joke first current among *telegraph* operators more than
// a century ago!
//
// Actually, use of `bug' in the general sense of a disruptive event
// goes back to Shakespeare!  In the first edition of Samuel Johnson's
// dictionary one meaning of `bug' is "A frightful object; a 
// walking spectre"; this is traced to `bugbear', a Welsh term for
// a variety of mythological monster which (to complete the circle)
// has recently been reintroduced into the popular lexicon through 
// fantasy role-playing games.
//
// In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to insects.
// Here is a plausible conversation that never actually happened:
//
// "There is a bug in this ant farm!"
//
// "What do you mean?  I don't see any ants in it."
//
// "That's the bug."
//
// A careful discussion of the etymological issues can be found in a
// paper by Fred R. Shapiro, 1987, "Entomology of the Computer Bug: 
// History and Folklore", American Speech 62(4):376-378.
//
// [There has been a widespread myth that the original bug was moved
// to the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry so 
// asserted.  A correspondent who thought to check discovered that the
// bug was not there.  While investigating this in late 1990, your 
// editor discovered that the NSWC still had the bug, but had 
// unsuccessfully tried to get the Smithsonian to accept it -- and
// that the present curator of their History of American Technology
// Museum didn't know this and agreed that it would make a worthwhile
// exhibit.  It was moved to the Smithsonian in mid-1991, but due to 
// space and money constraints has not yet been exhibited.  Thus, the
// process of investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in
// an entirely unexpected way, by making the myth true!  -- ESR]


 Sources
---------

[1] ddd-3.3.12 Source Code (ddd.C)  (https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ddd/) -- 2021-02-24


------------------------------------------------------------------------


 Changelog
-----------

2021-02-24   creation