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more than you wanted to know, but according to esr[1]:
Historical note: Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer
better known for inventing COBOL) 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 (though, as she was careful to admit, she was not
there when it happened). 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). The entire story,
with a picture of the logbook and the moth taped into it, is recorded
in the "Annals of the History of Computing", Vol. 3, No. 3 (July
1981), pp. 285-286.
The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), 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.
Indeed, 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!
Or perhaps not a joke. Historians of the field inform us that the term
"bug" was regularly used in the early days of telegraphy to refer to a
variety of semi-automatic telegraphy keyers that would send a string
of dots if you held them down. In fact, the Vibroplex keyers (which
were among the most common of this type) even had a graphic of a
beetle on them (and still do)! While the ability to send repeated dots
automatically was very useful for professional morse code operators,
these were also significantly trickier to use than the older manual
keyers, and it could take some practice to ensure one didn't introduce
extraneous dots into the code by holding the key down a fraction too
long. In the hands of an inexperienced operator, a Vibroplex "bug" on
the line could mean that a lot of garbled Morse would soon be coming
your way.
Further, the term "bug" has long been used among radio technicians to
describe a device that converts electromagnetic field variations into
acoustic signals. It is used to trace radio interference and look for
dangerous radio emissions. Radio community usage derives from the
roach-like shape of the first versions used by 19th century
physicists. The first versions consisted of a coil of wire (roach
body), with the two wire ends sticking out and bent back to nearly
touch forming a spark gap (roach antennae). The bug is to the radio
technician what the stethoscope is to the stereotypical medical
doctor. This sense is almost certainly ancestral to modern use of
"bug" for a covert monitoring device, but may also have contributed to
the use of "bug" for the effects of radio interference itself.
Actually, use of `bug' in the general sense of a disruptive event goes
back to Shakespeare! (Henry VI, part III - Act V, Scene II: King
Edward: "So, lie thou there. Die thou; and die our fear; For Warwick
was a bug that fear'd us all.") 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.
[1] http://tuxedo.org/~esr/
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