The USS Yorktown The USS Yorktown is a fantastic example of a terrible mistake made by the engineers that programmed the ship. The number zero proved that it was very powerful, and that it should not be overlooked so quickly. The USS Yorktown was a test-bed for a program in the Navy known as the Smart Ship program. The reason the ship crashed was because the ship tried to divide by zero. When the ship tried to divide by zero, the ship had a buffer overflow error. A buffer overflow error occurs when a program tries to write more data than the buffer can is designed to withstand. After the ship tried to divide by zero, the ship’s engines and entire propulsion system failed. This event is one of the biggest disasters from the result of a glitch in the computer system. The USS Yorktown was a test-bed for a new program in the navy called the Navy’s Smart Ship program. The USS Yorktown contained twenty-seven different computers. Each and every one of these computers had 200 MHz …show more content…
Once they arrived at the docks, the engineers worked frantically to find out the problem that caused the engines to fail. They had found out that someone forgot to take a zero out of the programming in the software. This caused the system to undergo a buffer overflow error. Then, the buffer overflow error caused the ship to fail because dividing by zero is undefined. After they identified the problem, it took a crew of engineers two whole days to fix the problem. First, they had to take the zero out of all of the computers. Next, they to repair the engines due to damage caused by the appearance of a zero in the software in the computers. Only after this could the USS Yorktown could get back to their former glory. This is fantastic example of why people should also double check their work for small mistakes that could have great