Who wants Fred Shapiro to be a millionaire?

[Fred Shapiro]

On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Donald M. Lance wrote:

> In about 1985 SCIENCE NEWS had an article on the moth qua first bug.
> The cover of that issue was a photograph of the log sheet (yellow pad)
> describing the event.  There may have been a photo of the moth too,
> but I may be manufacturing a memory here. Definitely not an urban
> legend.  I have the piece in a file somewhere (made copies of it for a
> class), but please don't ask me to look for it, because I'm way way
> behind on too many more important things.

All right, let me clarify this.  The existence of the moth found in the
Mark II in 1947 is not an urban legend.  Indeed, it is the best documented
insect that ever lived.  It is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution,
taped to the pioneer computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper's log of 9
Sept. 1947.

The urban legend is that computer glitches are called "bugs" BECAUSE the
moth was found.  This is demonstrably untrue.  Edison frequently talked
about "bugs" in the 19th century.  The OED has an 1889 citation:  "Mr.
Edison ... had been up the two previous nights discovering a 'bug' in his
phonograph -- an expression for solving a difficutly, and implying that
some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the
trouble."

The notation beside the moth in Murray's log reads, "First actual case of
bug being found."  Clearly Murray thought the discovery of the moth
remarkable because computer glitches were ALREADY called bugs.  Murray
herself had used the word in writing by 1945.  Her papers contain cute
1945 drawings of bugs.  Unfortunately, in later life Murray seems to have
forgotten or chosen to overlook the fact that the term predated the Mark
II, and she went around the country lecturing about her "famous bug
story."  This contributed greatly to the popularity of the moth myth.

Unlike most colorful phony etymologies, this one was actually in the
process of being corrected in popular consciousness.  My articles in Byte,
the Annals of the History of Computing, and American Speech started the
process, then the online Jargon File referred to the American Speech
piece, as did the million-copy-selling Hacker's Dictionary.  But Regis may
now have undone all that and given the myth new strength.


Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2