Moth in the machine: Debugging the origins of 'bug'

Was the first "bug" in a computer program discovered by Grace Hopper? The story goes that a moth was removed with tweezers from a relay and taped into the log by Grace Hopper. Good story, but it is not entirely true. Like all myths, there is a little truth in the story.

"The core facts of the story are true -- including the date of September 9 and time of 15:45 hours -- but that's not how this meaning of the word bug appeared in the dictionary. Inventors and engineers had been talking about bugs for more than a century before the moth in the relay incident. Even Thomas Edison used the word."

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