bugs

Credit phb Copied from eMail as an example only: Kel Richards' Ozword of the Day: "Bugs"  With the world stunned by a global computer outage, we find ourselves bombarded by the word ‘bug’—this was not, we are told, a hacking attack, it was a small ‘bug’ in a program patch. But why is such a thing called a ‘bug’?  Well, there is a story behind this use of the word, and, as it happens the story is wrong. But it’s so widespread, let me explain it and then debunk it.  The story is that the word was first used by computer language pioneer Dr Grace Hooper. On September 9, 1947, she was part of team working on Harvard University’s Mark II computer that found a bug gumming up the works—a moth had squeezed into one of the machine’s components—creating a short-circuit.  After extracting it, Dr Hooper taped it to the logbook with the caption ‘first actual case of a bug being found.’ That logbook, with moth intact, is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.  It's a great story, and I’m sure it really happened.  But it’s not the origin of the use of ‘bug’ for a defect or fault in a machine or in a process (especially an electrical or electronic one).  That use of the word ‘bug’ has been traced back to at least…