NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/comp/dcom/telecom/12039

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-19 | 5.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!telecom-request
From: [e-mail] (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Telecom Quotations
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 19 Nov 92 23:37:51 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 861, Message 1 of 9

> "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a
>  means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
>     -- Western Union memo, 1877

This one is on the list three times!


[Moderator's Note: Yeah, but it is the best one of all! I deliberatly
did not edit it out. I should have left it in three more times! :)   PAT]

> BUG [from telephone terminology, "bugs in a telephone cable", blamed
>    for noisy lines; however, Jean Sammet has repeatedly been heard to
>    claim that the use of the term in CS comes from a story concerning
>    actual bugs found wedged in an early malfunctioning computer] n. An
>    unwanted and unintended property of a program.  (People can have
>    bugs too (even winners) as in "PHW is a super winner, but he has
>    some bugs.")  See FEATURE.
>                 -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary

The document is properly called the Jargon File these days in its
online form; in print it has been The Hacker's Dictionary and now The
New Hacker's Dictionary.  The version above is quite an old one is,
but the expanded current version mentions telephony even less.  FYI:

:bug: n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece
   of hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction.  Antonym of
   {feature}.  Examples: "There's a bug in the editor: it writes
   things out backwards."  "The system crashed because of a hardware
   bug."  "Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs" (i.e., Fred is
   a good guy, but he has a few personality problems).

   Historical note: Some have said this term came from telephone
   company usage, in which "bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed
   for noisy lines, but this appears to be an incorrect folk
   etymology.  Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer better
   known for inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in which a
   technician solved a persistent {glitch} in the Harvard Mark II
   machine by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts
   of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in
   its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was
   careful to admit, she was not there when it happened).  For many
   years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug
   in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface
   Warfare Center.  The entire story, with a picture of the logbook
   and the moth taped into it, is recorded in the `Annals of the
   History of Computing', Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285--286.

   The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1945), reads "1545
   Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay.  First actual case of bug being
   found".  This wording seems to establish that the term was already
   in use at the time in its current specific sense --- and Hopper
   herself reports that the term `bug' was regularly applied to
   problems in radar electronics during WWII.  Indeed, the use of
   `bug' to mean an industrial defect was already established in
   Thomas Edison's time, and `bug' in the sense of an disruptive
   event goes back to Shakespeare!  In the first edition of Samuel
   Johnson's dictionary one meaning of `bug' is "A frightful
   object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to `bugbear', a Welsh
   term for a variety of mythological monster which (to complete the
   circle) has recently been reintroduced into the popular lexicon
   through fantasy role-playing games.

   In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to insects.
   Here is a plausible conversation that never actually happened:

   "There is a bug in this ant farm!"

   "What do you mean?  I don't see any ants in it."

   "That's the bug."

   [There has been a widespread myth that the original bug was moved
   to the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry so
   asserted.  A correspondent who thought to check discovered that the
   bug was not there.  While investigating this in late 1990, your
   editor discovered that the NSWC still had the bug, but had
   unsuccessfully tried to get the Smithsonian to accept it --- and
   that the present curator of their History of American Technology
   Museum didn't know this and agreed that it would make a worthwhile
   exhibit.  It was moved to the Smithsonian in mid-1991.  Thus, the
   process of investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in
   an entirely unexpected way, by making the myth true!  --- ESR]

   [1992 update: the plot thickens!  A usually reliable source reports
   having seen The Bug at the Smithsonian in 1978.  I am unable to
   reconcile the conflicting histories I have been offered, and merely
   report this fact here. --- ESR.]

ESR is Eric Raymond, the current editor.


Add to the list this one, which I use as one of my signature quotes:

       "I can direct dial today a man my parents warred with.
        They wanted to kill him, I want to sell software to him."
                                          -- Brad Templeton

In one of Arthur C. Clarke's novels there's a beautiful throwaway line
about the historic abolition of long-distance charges on January 1,
2001, or some such date.  It's quoted in a recent nonfiction book of
his which I've been meaning to review for Telecom; I'll find the quote
if I remember.


Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, [e-mail]