Posted by: lopan
Reminds me of how the word 'bug' was introduced to the computer world.Which is reportedly an urban myth. There are lots of people propogating the Grace Hopper "Moth" story, but I think it's been shown that the term Bug was in use prior to that incident.
Grace Hopper ... liked to tell a story in which a technician solved a glitch in the Harvard Mark II machine by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated bug in its hackish sense as a joke about the incident. For many years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC).It goes on after that to examine it's potential etymology (but not entomology).
The text of the log entry reads "1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being found". This wording establishes that the term was already in use at the time in its current specific sense -- and Hopper herself reports that the term `bug' was regularly applied to problems in radar electronics during WWII.
So what would be an abbeviation for a Ternary digIT.Let's see if I can remember the limerick right...