Re: RPG Trivia

["Leif Svalgaard" <leif@xxxxxxxx>]

From: Douglas Handy <dhandy1@bellsouth.net>
> >> >>>I'm not sure if the lady you mention was Grace Hopper who is credited
> >> with inventing the term bug -
> >
> >Thomas Edison "invented" the term "bug"

The use of "bug" to mean an industrial defect was
already established in Thomas Edison's time, and a
more specific and rather modern use can be found
in an electrical handbook from 1896 ("Hawkin's New
Catechism of Electricity", Theo. Audel & Co.) which
says: "The term "bug" is used to a limited extent
to designate any fault or trouble in the connections
or working of electric apparatus." It further notes that
the term is "said to have originated in quadruplex
telegraphy and have been transferred to all electric
apparatus."

The latter observation may explain a common folk
etymology of the term; that it came from telephone
company usage, in which "bugs in a telephone cable"
were blamed for noisy lines. Though this derivation
seems to be mistaken, it may well be a distorted
memory of a joke first current among *telegraph*
operators more than a century ago!

Actually, use of "bug" in the general sense of a
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.

http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?bug



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