Myth

The story is a simply one. In 1945, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator (a primitive computer).

On the 9th of September, 1945, when the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F.

The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. The entry reads: "First actual case of bug being found."

The word went out that they had "debugged" the machine and the term "debugging a computer program" was born.

Although Grace Hopper was always careful to admit that she was not there when it actually happened, it was one of her favourite stories.

Reality

While the story of the bug is true, the origin of the phrase pre-dates it by at least 60 years. The term was use during Thomas Edison's life to mean an industrial defect.

From the Pall Mall Gazette of 11 March 1889:
Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering 'a bug' in his phonograph - an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble.

So while the moth makes a lovely story and seems to tie up the looses ends to our modern understand of the term 'bug', it is in fact based upon a much earlier version.

Tags: computer bug, etimology, bug, Cochroach