Bug (software)

The word bug came to be used after an actual insect was found to cause a failure in early, vacuum-tube-based computers.

A bug in software is the misbehavior of a computer program that was not intended by the person(s) who developed it. The word can likewise be used to described unwanted behavior in hardware, including computer chips or any hardware based on digital logic, and in analog hardware designs.

Although the term "debugging" already existed in 1947, finding an actual bug was an amusing occurrence and was recorded for posterity in an engineering notebook for the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator at Harvard University. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia, which erroneously dated it 9 September 1945. The Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History and other sources have the correct date of 9 September 1947 (Object ID: 1994.0191.01).