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Cyhist Dec 18 1996 B
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Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 15:56:38 EST
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
From: keith reid-green <kreid-green@ets.org>
Subject: Re: Bugs and Computation
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
M. Ravnitzky said "I don't buy the Navy broad's single moth episode explanation for "bugs"."
You can get court-martialled nowadays for talking like that. The "Navy broad" was Adm. Grace Hopper, and I've seen the actual bug, which of course isn't a bug, it's a moth, and there's not a lot left of it. I suppose everybody knows that the moth got squished in a printer relay, so it was a hardware bug, not a software bug, the latter being what most bugs are.
When lecturing, Grace Hopper liked to show a length of copper wire, about 13" long, and she'd say, "That's a microsecond" and go on to explain that electricity traveled about that far in a microsecond. She also claimed to be the "inventor" of COBOL. Nobody's perfect...
Keith Reid-Green
KReid-Green@ets.org
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
From: keith reid-green <kreid-green@ets.org>
Subject: Re: Bugs and Computation
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
M. Ravnitzky said "I don't buy the Navy broad's single moth episode explanation for "bugs"."
You can get court-martialled nowadays for talking like that. The "Navy broad" was Adm. Grace Hopper, and I've seen the actual bug, which of course isn't a bug, it's a moth, and there's not a lot left of it. I suppose everybody knows that the moth got squished in a printer relay, so it was a hardware bug, not a software bug, the latter being what most bugs are.
When lecturing, Grace Hopper liked to show a length of copper wire, about 13" long, and she'd say, "That's a microsecond" and go on to explain that electricity traveled about that far in a microsecond. She also claimed to be the "inventor" of COBOL. Nobody's perfect...
Keith Reid-Green
KReid-Green@ets.org
______________________________________________________________________
