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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

#111
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#112
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For what’s it’s worth my Japanese friends can’t read cursive.

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

#113
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People did actually start calling WW1 "The first world war" long before WW2 started. There is even few instances of that terminology going back to 1914. They were pessimistic there would be more.

In my experience, it was always "The Great War".

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

#114
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of the letters are different enough, especially in the middle of a word. IMO, messy cursive is WAY harder to read than messy print writing.

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

#115
post #89

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.

The human mind works on narratives, from myths and legends to research papers and court cases.

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

#116
post #72

Mundane observation, but I love reading stories about this era of computing and seeing the history that’s behind all the conventions we take for granted. The “log” was an actual notebook that was manually updated by a human, taking its name from a nautical logbook. The “console” was called that because it was a piece of furniture (a console table) that happened to contain lights that showed the system status. This st…

> The “console” was called that because it was a piece of furniture I've heard that one's 'study' used to be a piece of furniture which held private papers etc in otherwise non-private or collective housing. Apparently the preferred color and grain of wood for such furniture now informs the conventional look of a "study" as an entire room. Source was moderately credible, IIRC.

I decided to research it. It doesn't appear that the furniture was first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_(room)#History says:

> The study developed from the closet or cabinet of the Renaissance era. From the beginning of the 18th century onwards increased literacy at the middle-class family level led to the setting aside of closed study and library areas within larger houses."

I found a 1635 example of such a closest in "A commentary vpon the Epistles of Saint Paul to Philemon, and to the Hebrewes together with a compendious explication of the second and third Epistles of Saint Iohn." at https://llds.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/llds/xmlui/bitstream/handle/... :

> There must be a closet, or a place to study in, that is, the cham­ber of our owne hearts."

https://www.etymonline.com/word/study says:

> Sense of "room furnished with books" is from late 14c.

It's unlikely that there was a specific "study" desk at that point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk#History says:

> Desk-style furniture appears not to have been used in classical antiquity or in other ancient centers of literate civilization in the Middle East or Far East, but there is no specific proof. Medieval illustrations show the first pieces of furniture which seem to have been designed and constructed for reading and writing. Before the invention of the movable type printing press in the 15th century, any reader was potentially a writer or publisher or both, since any book or other document had to be copied by hand. The desks were designed with slots and hooks for bookmarks and for writing implements. Since manuscript volumes were sometimes large and heavy, desks of the period usually had massive structures.

Here are some early desks:

1480 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Jerome_in_His_Study_(Ghi...

1478 - https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/malesskir...

1500 - http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/14/77089

I don't see how they particularly inform the modern study.

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

#118
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 was looking through old (1900 - 1940) census records recently, they were all hand written then. Some people had beautifully legible writing, others chicken scratch, and occasionally I'd see something like what the average 30-something's handwriting looks like today.

When I was young there was talk about getting rid of cursive handwriting in school. We were still required to turn in writing assignments hand written in cursive in ink. The older generation would say it was a skill worth practicing, while kids would joke about all the lies lower grade teachers told us about higher grades ("in middle school if you don't write in cursive they won't accept your assignment"). Today they don't teach cursive.

I wish I had better handwriting and now I practice to improve it.

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

#119

I actually saw Grace Hopper in LA during the early 80s. She told this story, along with showing her physical "nanosecond" (the string representing the distance light travels in a nanosecond). I doubt she said "no one ever called it a bug before this." I also don't remember if she claimed to have written the notation in the log, or merely said that someone did. It was a just a charming pun about bugs, and a story abou…

Video for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7jFcaj3ovk

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

#120

I actually saw Grace Hopper in LA during the early 80s. She told this story, along with showing her physical "nanosecond" (the string representing the distance light travels in a nanosecond). I doubt she said "no one ever called it a bug before this." I also don't remember if she claimed to have written the notation in the log, or merely said that someone did. It was a just a charming pun about bugs, and a story abou…

Video for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7jFcaj3ovk

Thanks. I thought I remembered she had a microsecond, too, but I wasn't sure so I left that out.
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