[Ads-l] Question About Grace Murray Hopper As Word-Coiner

Hugo hugovk at GMAIL.COM
Wed Feb 15 20:29:24 UTC 2017


Yep, the 1944 computer "bug" predates Hopper's 1947 computer "bug".
Here's what Kidwell wrote:

---
The ASCC Mark I arrived at Harvard in February of 1944 and was
installed with the assistance of IBM engineers (see Fig. 2 ). I.B.
Cohen has examined a photocopy of the logbook kept by Robert Campbell,
a young physicist at the Computation Laboratory. It tersely summarizes
hours spent finding and correcting errors. On 17 April 1944, Campbell
wrote, "Ran test problem. Mr. Durfee from I.B.M. was here to help us
find 'bugs.'"
---

Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, "Stalking the Elusive Computer Bug," IEEE
Annals of the History of Computing, pp. 5-9, October-December, 1998
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=612741

Also reported by I. Bernard Cohen, professor of the history of science
at Harvard:

* Cohen, I.B.; , "The use of “bug” in computing," IEEE Annals of the
History of Computing, vol.16, no.2, pp.54-55, Summer 1994
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?isNumber=6924&arNumber=279235&isnumber=6924&arnumber=279235&tag=1

* And in his book Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer.
https://goo.gl/a0KlS5

Hugo

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list