[Ads-l] Antedating "virus" of the computer type
Bill Mullins
amcombill at HOTMAIL.COM
Wed Oct 30 00:06:28 UTC 2019
OED has 1972, for the David Gerrold novel mentioned below.
Gregory Benford published a story in 1970 that had a computer virus in it, but it was never called that. The program's name, however, was "VIRUS".
Seems like this should at least be a bracketed citation.
Gregory Benford, "The Scarred Man" _Venture_ 5/1970 p 128-129
"The flunkies would go in, fiddle with the machine the way Sapiro had told them, and then Sapiro would pop in, dump the program -- he called it
VIRUS -- and take off."
https://archive.org/details/Venture_v04n02_1970-05/page/n127
Background here:
http://www.gregorybenford.com/extra/the-scarred-man-returns/
> From gbarrett at AMERICANDIALECT.ORG Mon Jun 14 13:20:50 1999
> From: gbarrett at AMERICANDIALECT.ORG (Grant Barrett)
> Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 09:20:50 -0400
> Subject: No subject
> Message-ID: <MON.14.JUN.1999.092050.0400.GBARRETT at AMERICANDIALECT.ORG>
>
> John Markoff, writing in the New York Times about computer viruses, worms and other
> infections, claims the following:
> "The term "worm" first appeared in John Brunner's 1975 novel "Shockwave Rider" (Del
> Rey Books) while "virus" first appeared in a computer context in David Gerrold's "When
> Harley Was One" (Ballantine, 1972)."
>From http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/yr/mo/biztech/articles/14worm.html
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list