On September 9th 1947, at a quarter to four in the afternoon, a common clothes moth (Tineola bisselliella) becomes tangled at Relay #70, Panel F of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator, where it was being tested at Harvard University. In an event that would become as miss-cited as it is infamous, American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral Grace Hopper reaches into the machine to retrieve the insect and tapes it to a page in the official logbook before scribbling beneath it: “first ›actual case of bug being found”.
In its fully matured form, the moth sprouts a pair of hardened protein wings and ultraviolet-sensitive eyes that enable it to travel by moonlight in a process called transverse orientation. Now, in a world teeming with 24 hour artificial lighting, the moth must contend with a fatal attraction towards a billion glittering moons.
But how strange, that path of an insect
and its self-consuming desire to move towards the light
should cause it to turn a sophisticated apparatus of automated control
upside-down.
