From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Date: Mon Mar 17 1997 - 11:27:22 MST
> The trouble with this widely believed story is that, as you can easily
> check in an old dictionary, "bug" as a printer's term for "error" long
> predates electronic computers.
>
> David Friedman
The /story/ is a true one; the assertion (which no one here made, I
might point out) that this is the origin of the word "bug" is what's
apocryphal. But you don't really need to resort to tracking down
every early use to establish that: the story itself should be sufficient
proof that "bug" was a commonly used term when the moth was found;
otherwise the incident wouldn't have been funny.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>
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