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Engineers found a moth trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer in 1947. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Institution, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The term computer bug was popularized by a real moth

Engineers found a moth trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer in 1947

On 9 September 1947, operators working on the Harvard Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator discovered a moth lodged inside electrical Relay 70 in Panel F. Operator Grace Hopper taped the moth into the logbook, annotating it as the first actual case of a bug being found. While the word bug had been used earlier for mechanical glitches, this incident cemented its software usage.

Where this comes from

Smithsonian Institution

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Tags: debugging, computing, history

The term computer bug was popularized by a real moth: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Engineers found a moth trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer in 1947. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Institution, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a technology fact?: Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.