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.
The `original bug' (the caption date is incorrect)
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!
Or perhaps not a joke. Historians of the field inform us that the
term "bug" was regularly used in the early days of telegraphy to
refer to a variety of semi-automatic telegraphy keyers that would
send a string of dots if you held them down. In fact, the Vibroplex
keyers (which were among the most common of this type) even had a
graphic of a beetle on them (and still do)! While the ability to send
repeated dots automatically was very useful for professional morse
code operators, these were also significantly trickier to use than
the older manual keyers, and it could take some practice to ensure
one didn't introduce extraneous dots into the code by holding the key
down a fraction too long. In the hands of an inexperienced operator,
a Vibroplex "bug" on the line could mean that a lot of garbled Morse
would soon be coming your way.
Further, the term "bug" has long been used among radio technicians to
describe a device that converts electromagnetic field variations into
acoustic signals. It is used to trace radio interference and look for
dangerous radio emissions. Radio community usage derives from the
roach-like shape of the first versions used by 19th century
physicists. The first versions consisted of a coil of wire (roach
body), with the two wire ends sticking out and bent back to nearly
touch forming a spark gap (roach antennae). The bug is to the radio
technician what the stethoscope is to the stereotypical medical
doctor. This sense is almost certainly ancestral to modern use of
"bug" for a covert monitoring device, but may also have contributed
to the use of "bug" for the effects of radio interference itself.
Actually, use of bug in the general sense of a disruptive event goes
back to Shakespeare! (Henry VI, part III - Act V, Scene II: King
Edward: "So, lie thou there. Die thou; and die our fear; For Warwick
was a bug that fear'd us all.") 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 was
not actually exhibited for years afterwards. Thus, the process of
investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in an entirely
unexpected way, by making the myth true! --ESR]
It helps to remember that this dates from 1973.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-10-31. The previous
cartoon was 73-07-24.)
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {Bohr bug}{bug}{feature}{misbug}{off the trolley}{restriction}{TECO}{workaround}]