Computers from the last half of the 1940s and the first half of the 1950s is what made Information Technology what it is today.  The ladies in this one picture illustrate the size of the circuitry to hold the value of one decimal digit. The early computers used decimal computation until Dr. Warner Von Braun pointed out that the natural language of computers was binary (on and off). All of these computers were developed for Aberdeen Proving Ground. Some of them were used in the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Assembly language groups binary digits into octal (3bits) or hexidecimal (4 bits). It was Grace Murray Hopper who developed a higher level language "COBOL". She was a navy ensign during WWII, and found a moth causing a malfunction of a mechanical computer that used relays. The moth was caught in the relay as it closed. Thus, she coined the term "bug." She ultimately became the first woman admiral.

Booting also came from those days. The computer technician would enter instructions by setting switches on the gigantic consoles that would eventually start the computer (in the UNIVAC it started a paper tape reader which read more instructions). That is how the computer pulled itself up by its boot straps.

Pretty soon the institutional knowledge of where these terms originated will pass from the scene.