where did the phrase halt and catch fire come from
Halt and Catch Fire One apocryphal story about the HCF instruction in an actual early CPU goes back to the late 1960s, when computers used magnetic core memory.[citation needed] The story goes that in order to speed up the core memory on their next model the engineers increased the read/write currents in the very fine wires that were threaded through the cores. This worked fine when the computer was executing normal programs, since memory accesses were spread throughout memory. However, the HALT instruction was implemented as a "Jump to self". This meant that the same core memory location was repeatedly accessed, and the very fine wires became so hot that they started to smoke—hence the instruction was labeled "Halt and Catch Fire".[29][better source needed]
Great Chicago Fire The fire started at about 9:00 p.m. on October 8, in or around a small barn belonging to the O'Leary family that bordered the alley behind 137 DeKoven Street.[3] The shed next to the barn was the first building to be consumed by the fire, but city officials never determined the exact cause of the blaze.[4] There has, however, been much speculation over the years. The most popular tale blames Mrs. O'Leary's cow, who allegedly knocked over a lantern; others state that a group of men were gambling inside the barn and knocked over a lantern.[5] Still other speculation suggests that the blaze was related to other fires in the Midwest that day.[1]