Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Courtesy of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA.
Caption: The First “Computer Bug”
Additional Description: Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1947. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". (The term "debugging" already existed; thus, finding an actual bug was an amusing occurrence.) In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia.
Submitted: July 27, 2019, by J. J. Prats of Powell, Ohio.
Database Locator Identification Number: p485690
File Size: 0.092 Megabytes

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