CHIPS Articles: First Computer Bug

First Computer Bug

By CHIPS Magazine - September 9, 2015

On Sept. 9, 1947 – Lt. Grace Hopper is part of a team that finds a moth that is bugging up the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator at Harvard. After debugging the system, the moth is affixed to the computer log, where Hopper notes: "First actual case of bug being found." Lt. Hopper later attains the rank of rear admiral.

In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was found in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia.

To learn more about U.S. Navy history, please go to the Naval History and Heritage Command website: www.history.navy.mil/ or visit the NHHC blog The Sextant.

TAGS: Cybersecurity, InfoSharing, KM

U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph, Courtesy of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, Va., 1988

Lt. j.g. Grace Brewster Hopper (seated second from right) with Cmdr. Howard H. Aiken (seated center), who developed the first large scale digital computer, officially called the IBM automatic sequence controlled calculator, more commonly called the Harvard Mark I. The posed photograph, with other members of the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project, was taken in front of the Mark I computer. Hopper started as the first programmer in 1944 on the Mark I (IBM ASCC). Photo taken at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., January 1944. Photo courtesy of Defense Visual Information Center.

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CHIPS Articles: First Computer Bug