Well, maybe some bird songs inspire, but this avian inspiration is a bit different...

I'm at the stage of life where almost everything reminds me of a story, & birds on telephone wires is no exception.

Around 45 years ago, before the day of integrated circuits, when computers were still evolving from rooms full of vacuum tubes, I was tasked to investigate the practicality of centralizing & automating personnel records in a geographically dispersed Federal agency.

I contacted IBM's Federal Systems Division in Gaithersburg, MD for a demonstration of their centralized system which used a computer in Alabama. The spiel was impressive as the tech explained what he was doing, & input the data. We waited while the electrons did their thing, & in a few moments the dot matrix printer started zip-zipping, & we peered at sheet of gibberish emerging from the printer.

The tech's shoulders slumped, & he exclaimed, "Oh S***! Birds on the bleeping telephone wires again."

Olroy,

If you had been a little earlier we might today refer to computer glitches as "birds-on-the-wire", alas!

How did the term “computer bug” originate?
In 1945 a lady by the name of Grace Hopper was working on a Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator (a stone age computer). The Mark II actually employed mechanical relays to simulate circuits. She was experiencing problems with a run and her subsequent investigation revealed that a moth (yes, moth as in flying bug) had become jammed in one of the mechanical relays. Hence the term “bug” emerged and we’re still using it today. This is another good reason why we should all clean our computer cases from time to time.

Hopper also pioneered the COBOL programming language and was the first female to become an admiral in the US Navy.

Hey Rusty, ever run into her?