The unusual reason behind the world's first computer bug

Computer and software bugs are something we all know about these days – they’re usually just minor inconveniences that we encounter during our endless doom-scrolling - but the very first recorded instance of one was quite different.

To be honest, the idea of ‘bugs’ have been reported for as long as there have been complex machines.

Thomas Edison reportedly complained about bugs in his various inventions as early as the 19^th century. However, the first real recorded instance of such a bug as we know it today was on September 1947, when a computer at Harvard University in Massachusetts called Mark II started making a number of errors.

Much different to nowadays however, this time it was an actual bug... Like an insect.

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In a logbook for the early computer, one of the Harvard team members wrote: “First actual case of a bug being found.”

So, when they opened up the computer to discover why it was f**king things up, they discovered that a moth had crawled inside and had disrupted the electronics therein.

One of the team members responsible for this historic find was the aptly named Dr Grace Hopper. She’s often given the credit for discovering and reporting the bug, but that’s not the case apparently.

Still, she’s the person who probably accounts for the reason the incident is famous.

Hopper is a bit of a legend in her field, having been one of the first ever computer programmers. She invented the first data processor in the English language, which started a chain of events that lead directly to some of the best technology we have today – including probably the phone or device that you’re reading this on.

Not bad, as far as legacies go.

As we’ve already covered, despite the fact that this may have been the first computer bug recorded, the term was already very much in place for a whole beforehand.

That applies to actual bugs, too.

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The aforementioned incident that Edison wrote about was a real insect that got into his technology, as he wrote on 3 March 1878: "You were partly correct, I did find a 'bug' in my apparatus, but it was not in the telephone proper.

“It was of the genus 'callbellum.' The insect appears to find conditions for its existence in all call apparatus of telephones"

That’s not a clue as to what type of creepy-crawlie it was, but simply a bit of a Latin joke that he made up about finding it.

I wouldn’t open with it Tom, not gonna lie.

Topics: Weird, Technology

Tom Wood

Tom Wood is a LADbible journalist and Twin Peaks enthusiast. Despite having a career in football cut short by a chronic lack of talent, he managed to obtain degrees from both the University of London and Salford. According to his French teacher, at the weekend he mostly likes to play football and go to the park with his brother. Contact Tom on [email protected]

@TPWagwim