History’s Worst Software Bugs
`With that recall, the Prius joined the ranks of the buggy computer — a club that began in 1945 when engineers found a moth in Panel F, Relay #70 of the Harvard Mark II system.1The computer was running a test of its multiplier and adder when the engineers noticed something was wrong. The moth was trapped, removed and taped into the computer’s logbook with the words: “first actual case of a bug being found.”
Sixty years later, computer bugs are still with us, and show no sign of going extinct. As the line between software and hardware blurs, coding errors are increasingly playing tricks on our daily lives. Bugs don’t just inhabit our operating systems and applications — today they lurk within our cell phones and our pacemakers, our power plants and medical equipment. And now, in our cars.
But which are the worst?’
It’s not every day you see the phrase `largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet’s history’ in a story about computers. 🙂
