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The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

lunduke.substack.com

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Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#41

Post by BoxOfRain »

mrhektor wrote: post #9

I'd just like to say that Thomas Edison's handwriting in his letter is absolutely beautiful. It almost looks like it's been typed out on a computer using a funky font. It's funny how the handwriting of almost everyone I know is quite bad these days. My own is almost illegible! I wonder what everyone thinks about this general degradation in penmanship? I guess it's not really needed in this day and age, but there's so…

I tried to improve my handwriting some years ago but didn't really commit to it, the upshot of that is that my handwriting kind of looks like a Victorian child's. It's 'loopy' in that old-fashioned way but the shapes aren't regular and controlled enough to be considered good handwriting.

Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#42

Post by jwildeboer »

AlbertoGP wrote: post #34

Grace Hopper telling the bug story, saying that [ THIS PART MIGHT BE WRONG, SEE BELOW: she was there but ] the bug was extracted from the relay and the note written in the logbook by “the operator”: > “ We were building Mark II on the summer of 1945 [...] Mark II stopped. We finally located the failing relay, it was one of the big signal relays, and inside the relay, beaten to death by the relay contacts, was a moth…

Bryan Lunduke is known (at least to me) for trending towards the exaggerated, clickbait style. This being just one of many examples of that approach.

Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#43

Post by labrador »

kryptiskt wrote: post #23

The logbook entry only makes sense if "bug" is a pre-existing term for a glitch, otherwise the humor with the real bug would fall flat. So I never understood how anybody could claim that it was the origin of the term.

Yes I thought the author missed this point in his zeal to prove that a Grace Hopper story was a fraud. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk can have all kinds of apocryphal stories associated with them, but that's more common among men.

Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#44

Post by int_19h »

mrhektor wrote: post #16
int_19h wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edison's handwriting is unusually legible even by the standards of that period. You can look at many other historical artefacts to see what the average looked like.

I looked up letters written by other 20th century scientists, the average looks pretty good: Marie Curie: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7722951 Tesla: https://www.benjamindecasseres.com/nikola-teslas-letter-to-b... They all seem to have this really "flowy" style

The average looks pretty similar to what's taught in schools today (in places that still teach handwriting).

Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#45

Post by raarts »

yitchelle wrote: post #18
mrhektor wrote: post #9

I'd just like to say that Thomas Edison's handwriting in his letter is absolutely beautiful. It almost looks like it's been typed out on a computer using a funky font. It's funny how the handwriting of almost everyone I know is quite bad these days. My own is almost illegible! I wonder what everyone thinks about this general degradation in penmanship? I guess it's not really needed in this day and age, but there's so…

Not only that, there is not one correction in that letter. Do they have multiple drafts before writing the final version that is sent?

What I remember from my youth (60s): you basically weren't allowed to strike-through, you had to start over the sentence. Many kids thus would learn to write without making errors, making sure you would think ahead about how to formulate properly while writing.

This also has assisted me in thinking before I speak.

Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#46

Post by austinjp »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #41
mrhektor wrote: post #9

I'd just like to say that Thomas Edison's handwriting in his letter is absolutely beautiful. It almost looks like it's been typed out on a computer using a funky font. It's funny how the handwriting of almost everyone I know is quite bad these days. My own is almost illegible! I wonder what everyone thinks about this general degradation in penmanship? I guess it's not really needed in this day and age, but there's so…

I tried to improve my handwriting some years ago but didn't really commit to it, the upshot of that is that my handwriting kind of looks like a Victorian child's. It's 'loopy' in that old-fashioned way but the shapes aren't regular and controlled enough to be considered good handwriting.

If you're right-handed, I highly recommend learning to write in italic. That's with a slight tilt to every letter, from bottom left to top right. Unless you hold a pen in an unusual way, this should be an easy movement.

You might want to start by just writing a line of conjoined wwwwwwwwww or mmmmmmmm. Then tweak the movement when you introduce individual letters, wewnwy, etc.

I did it years ago to increase my writing speed, and reduce discomfort if I was writing for a prolonged time (handwritten exams). Hugely beneficial.

Increased legibility was an added bonus, although this probably requires deliberate attention for some people.

Edit: From brief Googling, I gather the terms italic and cursive are often used interchangeably. My distinction between the two is that cursive is italic plus extra decorations (loops etc).

Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#47

Post by a-dub »

AlbertoGP wrote: post #34

Grace Hopper telling the bug story, saying that [ THIS PART MIGHT BE WRONG, SEE BELOW: she was there but ] the bug was extracted from the relay and the note written in the logbook by “the operator”: > “ We were building Mark II on the summer of 1945 [...] Mark II stopped. We finally located the failing relay, it was one of the big signal relays, and inside the relay, beaten to death by the relay contacts, was a moth…

i don't remember hopper being part of the story (although i've never been one for names).

the story claimed it was the first ever computer bug. the fact that edison used to have to pick them out of telephone and telegraph equipment doesn't refute this for me, unless you want to make some claim that manually switched telephone/telegraph networks were actually computing something.

Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#48

Post by ogurechny »

mrhektor wrote: post #9

I'd just like to say that Thomas Edison's handwriting in his letter is absolutely beautiful. It almost looks like it's been typed out on a computer using a funky font. It's funny how the handwriting of almost everyone I know is quite bad these days. My own is almost illegible! I wonder what everyone thinks about this general degradation in penmanship? I guess it's not really needed in this day and age, but there's so…

Those who learned to write with dip pens blame the ballpoint pens. However, people who actually use dip pens say that mass-made ones were not that good at helping you write better.

There is also another interesting question of how complex writing exercises set the manner to express one's thoughts both orally and on paper.

Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#49

Post by pingpongrandom »

susam wrote: post #31

The log book entry that says, "First actual case of bug being found", indeed always seemed like a piece of humour to me. The presence of the word "actual" in the entry makes sense only if the term "bug" to mean defects is already established in the industry. If this log book entry really were the first time a bug was found in a computer, it would have merely said, "a bug was found", not "first actual case of bug". Im…

Yep, nobody got presented awards for the "First World War".

Re: The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies

#50

Post by AlbertoGP »

a-dub wrote: post #47
AlbertoGP wrote: post #34

Grace Hopper telling the bug story, saying that [ THIS PART MIGHT BE WRONG, SEE BELOW: she was there but ] the bug was extracted from the relay and the note written in the logbook by “the operator”: > “ We were building Mark II on the summer of 1945 [...] Mark II stopped. We finally located the failing relay, it was one of the big signal relays, and inside the relay, beaten to death by the relay contacts, was a moth…

i don't remember hopper being part of the story (although i've never been one for names). the story claimed it was the first ever computer bug. the fact that edison used to have to pick them out of telephone and telegraph equipment doesn't refute this for me, unless you want to make some claim that manually switched telephone/telegraph networks were actually computing something.

> i don't remember hopper being part of the story (although i've never been one for names).

You are right, I might have been mistaken in understanding her sentence “We finally located...”. I’ve added a note about it that at the end of my comment:

> Edit 2: the comment by psychoslave links to the Wikipedia page without further context, and there it says that Hopper was not present when the moth was found: [...]

> I haven’t been able to find any clear mention by Grace Hopper on whether she was there when the moth was found: in the video I linked at the top she might have said “They finally located” instead of “We finally located” as I heard. If she wasn’t there, then Lunduke’s article would be, AFAICT, completely correct. It is in any case way more correct than others I’ve read.

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