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

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

#81

Post by hoosieree »

edanm wrote: post #63
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 remembered someone once posted about Dijkstra's handwriting being incredible, so I tracked down the link for you, see the third image on that page for an example: https://joshldavis.com/2013/05/20/the-path-to-dijkstras-hand... The whole blog is about trying to write like Dijkstra.

Ah yes, Dijkstra, the man responsible for adding i, j, and k to the alphabet.

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

#82

Post by psychphysic »

pingpongrandom wrote: post #49
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".

"World War I" would have been a better example.

That only made sense after WWII.

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

#83

Post by jcranmer »

dataflow wrote: post #77
jcranmer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, that honor goes to the Seven Years' War, which saw significant fighting both in Europe and in North America. The French Revolutionary Wars/Napoleonic Wars were equally grand in scale, and conducted at a time when the "world" for all practical purposes included only European powers--all of the major ones got involved in those conflicts at one point or another; even the newly-independent US got peripherally i…

> when the "world" for all practical purposes included only European powers Why though? I think even China alone had almost as large a population in 1800 (300M) as the US does right now so I'm confused what this is supposed to mean? Japan also had some 30M, Russia 35M. (I haven't checked other countries.) We're defining "the world" in 1800 to be "European powers" so that we can claim the first world war was actually…

Sorry, I should have clarified further. This is "world" in terms of European political discourse--as far as Europe was concerned, if you weren't a European power (and Russia most certainly was a European power), you weren't really a country worth caring about, just fodder for imperialism and colonization.

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

#84

Post by dataflow »

jcranmer wrote: post #83
dataflow wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the "world" for all practical purposes included only European powers Why though? I think even China alone had almost as large a population in 1800 (300M) as the US does right now so I'm confused what this is supposed to mean? Japan also had some 30M, Russia 35M. (I haven't checked other countries.) We're defining "the world" in 1800 to be "European powers" so that we can claim the first world war was actually…

Sorry, I should have clarified further. This is "world" in terms of European political discourse--as far as Europe was concerned, if you weren't a European power (and Russia most certainly was a European power), you weren't really a country worth caring about, just fodder for imperialism and colonization.

Okay sure I guess, but what is this meant to imply? Even taking it at face value, this clearly still didn't cause Europe to call that war the first World War, so what conclusion are we drawing from this?

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

#85

Post by pcrh »

edanm wrote: post #63
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 remembered someone once posted about Dijkstra's handwriting being incredible, so I tracked down the link for you, see the third image on that page for an example: https://joshldavis.com/2013/05/20/the-path-to-dijkstras-hand... The whole blog is about trying to write like Dijkstra.

The more amazing aspect of that blog post is the authors lack of familiarity with cursive script. Ordinarily, few people would be impressed by neat but otherwise mundane block letter handwriting.

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

#86

Post by drdec »

austinjp wrote: post #46
BoxOfRain wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 writin…

Cursive is essentially what happens if you try to write without lifting your pen from the paper.

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

#87

Post by datavirtue »

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…

My handwriting used to be exquisite. Adults would be taken aback by the quality when I was ten-twelve years old.

It's trash now.

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

#88

Post by AshamedCaptain »

int_19h wrote: post #10
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…

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 agree. I would say handwriting has actually improved in legibility through history if anything. Most historic handwriting tended to be closer to what today we would call shorthand or stenography. Even in formal texts, it is common to find missing vowels or worse (and if you go even farther back in time, it is common to find the same word spelled in different ways even within the same page).

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

#89

Post by taylodl »

The most fascinating thing about this story is we're witnessing the making of a myth - and how good people are at myth making. People love telling these stories even when they know they may not be 100% true. It's the story that matters, not the veracity. That's the challenge of a historian, separating fact from myth.

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

#90

Post by jogjayr »

yummypaint wrote: post #37
mrhektor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, I think the reason is that cursive has been dropped from the US curriculum since 2013: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171108-the-uncertain-fu...

Good riddance. I remember being forced to do this as a kid and knowing full well it was a waste of time and that my life would be spent with keyboards. The only time ive ever "needed" it was exactly once to write that paragraph they make you reproduce in cursive for the SAT, which makes no sense in the first place, as though the weight carried by an attestation is modulated by the font it's rendered in. Now i feel ba…

> handwriting that becomes increasingly illegible to the general population

Are younger people really not able to read cursive? I find that hard to believe; it's still the same letters.

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