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Writer's pictureThomas Bennedetto

September 9th

Today is the anniversary of the first ever computer bug, and it was a literal bug. The situation happened this day in 1947, when a moth snuck into one of those giant early computers they had at Harvard at the time and one Dr. Grace Hopper had to physically debug it out for the computer to work again. She even saved the bug under tape in her journal. Despite this, this isn't the origin of the word "bug" meaning a technical issue. It was just a funny coincidence that the first observed computer problem was caused by an actual insect.


And while we're talking about the origins of computer glossary terms, let me address an actual term origin. Spam . Like a lot of things on the early internet, it's a Monty Python reference. There is a particular sketch they have where a man would attempt to order breakfast just to be bombarded by the presence of spam on the restaurant's menu and singing vikings. it's easy to see what clicked for the phrase to start being used. However, some believed Spam was only supposed to refer to one person posting too much in one spot, with sister terms "Velveeta" (posing the same message in too many places) and "Jello" (a series of messages that are velveeta and spam at the same time) never really taking off even at the time.


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3 Comments


Thomas Bennedetto
Thomas Bennedetto
Sep 09, 2022

I know right? It's definitely destict and specific enough. Like a lot of old copypastas would encourage people to velveeta the message everywhere. Or you see spambots velveeta all over message boards. Maybe you should call them velveeta-bots if they messaging like that. The possibilities are endless!

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Calexta
Calexta
Sep 10, 2022
Replying to

I don't know it might be a bit cheesy for most people

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mediocrelyx
Sep 09, 2022

Do kind of wish that Velveeta had stuck around though.

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