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

[Ben Zimmer]

The Kidwell article says Hopper arrived at Harvard in early July 1944, a
few months after Campbell wrote that note.


On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 5:22 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Do we know whether Hopper was already at Harvard in April 1944?
>
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Hugo
> <hugovk at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 3:29 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Question About Grace Murray Hopper As Word-Coiner
>
> 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
>
>
>

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