On Sun, 2 Feb 2003, Mark Tiller wrote: > >She also found a moth that was stuck in a relay (or maybe a valve) that >was causing the computer to produce errors, thus coining the term "Bug" >to describe a computer problem. The moth was taped to a sheet of paper >along with a brief description. It's available on the net somewhere, so >you can see a picture of the original computer bug :-) > I'm sure that she didn't *coin* the word "bug" to describe a computer problem, since the word "bug" to describe a problem had already existed for a long time... See also: http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/bug.html 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. And also: http://www.tafkac.org/faq2k/compute_86.html (which includes links to the actual picture of the logbook, by the way) Which does not dispute anything else about her, and indeed confirms much of it. -- (I am *NOT* Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist & Philological Busybody, but I am occasionally a reasonable facsimile thereof whilst the Good Doctor is absent.)