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==Etymology==
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[[File:First Computer Bug, 1945.jpg|thumb|A computer log entry from the Mark II, with a moth taped to the page]]
The term "bug", in the sense of defect, dates back at least to 1878 when [[Thomas Edison]] wrote "little faults and difficulties" of mechanical engineering as "Bugs".
The terms "bug" and "debugging" are popularly attributed to [[Admiral Grace Hopper]] in the 1940s.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JT0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA33 |title=InfoWorld Oct 5, 1981 |date=5 October 1981 |access-date=July 17, 2019 |archive-date=September 18, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190918012636/https://books.google.com/books?id=JT0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA33&lpg=RA1-PA33&focus=viewport |url-status=live }}</ref> While she was working on a [[Harvard Mark II|Mark II]] computer at Harvard University, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the system. However, the term "bug", in the sense of "technical error", dates back at least to 1878 and [[Thomas Edison]] who describes the "little faults and difficulties" of mechanical engineering as "Bugs".▼
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Similarly, the term "debugging" seems to have been used as a term in aeronautics before entering the world of computers. In an interview Grace Hopper remarked that she was not coining the term.{{Citation needed|date=July 2015}} The moth fit the already existing terminology, so it was saved. A letter from [[J. Robert Oppenheimer]] (director of the WWII atomic bomb [[Manhattan Project]] at Los Alamos, New Mexico) used the term in a letter to Dr. [[Ernest Lawrence]] at UC Berkeley, dated October 27, 1944,<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/physics/images/bigscience25.jpg |title=Archived copy |access-date=2019-12-17 |archive-date=2019-11-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191121001830/https://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/physics/images/bigscience25.jpg |url-status=live }}</ref> regarding the recruitment of additional technical staff.
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