[PRL] Therac-25

[Felix S Klock]

Philippe et al.-

The Ariane-5 rocket is also a classic example of disaster caused by  
software (no lives were lost directly due to the Ariane rocket failure,  
but it is still a big deal, and serves as an interesting example for us  
because the accident was caused by an unhandled exception, an exception  
thrown by code that there was no reason to continue executing at that  
stage in the launch).

Daniel Jackson's notes from 6.170 list these and other examples in  
section 3.2 of the following lecture notes:

http://6170.lcs.mit.edu/www-archive/Old-2002-Fall/lectures/lecture 
-01.pdf

(you can probably find more up to date notes if you poke around; I just  
google'd for those.)

-Felix


On Dec 27, 2004, at 11:09 PM, Matthias Felleisen wrote:

> Boy, if this is the first time you have heard about this, I officially  
> apologize. ARGH!
>
> On Dec 27, 2004, at 10:55 PM, Philippe Meunier wrote:
>
>> I just came across the story of the Therac-25.  It's almost twenty
>> years old but it's the first time I've heard of that thing.  As far as
>> I can remember it's also the first story I've read where people have
>> died as a direct result of software bugs.
>>
>> http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/TheracClass.html
>>
>> The "Class Notes" give a very brief overview.  There's a link to an
>> article ("An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents") with much more
>> details.  The article is quite long so here are some highlights:
>> ...