The “blue screen of death” resulting from a crash of the Windows XP computer operating system. A solid blue computer screen with white lettering that reads: “A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down…”
9 September 2022
To troubleshoot is to fix a problem or resolve a difficulty, and a troubleshooter is someone who does this. The metaphor evoked is that of a gunman who eliminates a criminal threat, but the terms got their start in the telephone industry at the turn of the twentieth century. Troubleshooter came first, and the verb is a backformation from the noun.
Trouble shooter is in place by the end of the nineteenth century. We find it in a classified ad in the Dallas Morning News of 29 August 1899:
WANTED—A trouble shooter for a local telephone exchange; a good place for a good man; no whisky drinkers or cigarette fiends need apply. Address Box 156, Longview, Tex.
And we see the closed compound troubleshooter in the same paper on 27 January 1905:
SITUATION by sober, reliable young man as operator, lineman, troubleshooter on telephone exchange. Address WALTER COLLIER, Santa Anna, Tex.
Despite these two early citations both being from Texas, the term is not a regional one. There are many intervening uses of troubleshooter in other locations.
We get the adjective trouble-shooting by 23 April 1916 when it appears in an article in the Sunday Oregonian about the auto industry:
F.T. Bolton, formerly head of the repair and service department of the Northwest Auto Company, has resigned his position with that organization and is now the proprietor of a “trouble-shooting” shop at 404 Davis.
(The hyphen in this quotation comes at a line break, so it’s unclear if the word was intended to be a hyphenated or a closed compound.)
And the verb appears by the end of 1924, when it appears in the Denver Post of 28 December 1924 in an advertisement for a radio school:
Radio school and experimental laboratories opening January 5, 1925. All circuits taught and diagnosed; building, assembling, broadcasting, transmitting and everything pertaining to radio. Advanced students have opportunity to experiment and trouble-shoot in our repair shop, and also to assist in the building of our new broadcast station. Tuition $100 for four months’ course. The first fifteen scholarships in the first class $75. Enlist now.
Sources:
“Earn $50 to $100.00 a Week in Radio” (advertisement). Denver Post (Colorado), 28 December 1924, 3.6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Help Wanted—Male” (advertisement). Dallas Morning News (Texas), 29 August 1899, 7. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. trouble-shooter, n.
“Situations Wanted—Male” (advertisement). Dallas Morning News (Texas), 27 January 1905, 8. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“30,000 Cars for State, Prediction.” Sunday Oregonian (Portland), 23 April 1916, 9. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Image credit: Syed Irfan Hussain, 2005. Public domain image (ineligible for copyright protection as common property with no original authorship).