In 1947, engineers on the Harvard Mark II found a moth in the machine and taped it into their logbook. The word bug was already decades old.
The first computer bug really was a bug. In 1947, engineers working on the Mark II computer at Harvard University found a moth stuck in one of its parts, taped it into their logbook, and labeled it "first actual case of bug being found."
But the moth did not give us the word. Our reading: the museum's note implies the word bug already meant a flaw by 1947, since the label calls the moth the first actual case.
"Bug" is older than computers
American engineers had been calling small flaws in machines "bugs" for over a century, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History says. Thomas Edison talked about bugs in electrical circuits in the 1870s.
When the first computers were built in the early 1940s, the people working on them found bugs in both the hardware and the programs.
Why the moth still matters
After the Mark II find, the words "bug" and "debug" soon became a standard part of programmers' language, the museum says. Mathematician and programmer Grace Hopper worked on the Mark II in 1947, and she and the rest of the team helped popularize both terms. The museum adds that this log book was probably not Hopper's.
Where the logbook is now
The logbook is in the collection of the National Museum of American History. It measures about 48.4 by 29.5 cm, and it is currently not on view.
