Therac-25 Incident

Being taught how to work with computers is a very important aspect that could help many people. Without being taught correctly, mistakes can be made with the technology which could cause some very large scale problems. One problem that involved computers was the Therac-25 incident. The Therac-25 machine was used for radiation therapy that directs a low-powered electron beam at someone. The problem with the machine was that the software that was developed for it had a major flaw that allowed a certain variable to overflow. This variable controlled the power that the beam was, so when it overflowed the beam would switch to high power and eventually cause radiation burns or radiation poisoning. In three cases, patients later died from the radiation poisoning caused by the machine (Computing Now).