Quite by accident I came across the question"Was the first computer bug a real insect?" The answer is yes and no. The term bug for a problem was in use well before computers. The first example cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is from The Pall Mall Gazette,dated March 11,1889: "Mr. Edison,I was informed,had been up the previous two nights discovering a bug in his phonograph an expression for solving a difficulty,and implying that some imaginary insect had secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble." The original bug was imaginary,but another story involving an early electromechanical computer reportedly failed because an insect had been smashed between the moving parts of a relay switch causing it to jam. The incident was written up in the logbook and spread from there through the early computer industry. So there was a real bug at one point,but probably not in the case of the first usage of the phrase.
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