{"id":34623,"date":"2005-08-10T10:00:13","date_gmt":"2005-08-10T10:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2005\/08\/10\/why-is-windows-error-reporting-nicknamed-dr-watson\/"},"modified":"2005-08-10T10:00:13","modified_gmt":"2005-08-10T10:00:13","slug":"why-is-windows-error-reporting-nicknamed-dr-watson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20050810-13\/?p=34623","title":{"rendered":"Why is Windows Error Reporting nicknamed &#8220;Dr. Watson&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The nickname for the feature known as Windows Error Reporting is &#8220;Dr. Watson&#8221;. Where did that name come from?<\/p>\n<p> As you have probably guessed, The name Dr.&nbsp;Watson was inspired by <a href=\"http:\/\/members.iinet.net.au\/~exlibris\/watson.html\"> the character of Dr.&nbsp;Watson<\/a>, the assistant to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk\/\"> Sherlock Holmes<\/a> in the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. <\/p>\n<p> It is my understanding that the doctor was originally developed as part of Windows&nbsp;3.0 beta testing. His job was to record data about application crashes to a file, so that the file could be uploaded and included with bug reports. The icon was (and continues to be) a friendly doctor using his stethoscope to investigate a problem. <\/p>\n<p> The Doctor has remained true to the &#8220;capture information about an error&#8221; aspect of his job. In the meantime, the word &#8220;Watson&#8221; has expanded its meaning to encompass <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/mikekelly\/archive\/2005\/02\/03\/366861.aspx\"> anonymous end-user feedback mechanisms in general, such as &#8220;Content Watson&#8221;<\/a>. (But if you hear &#8220;Watson&#8221; by itself, the speaker is almost certainly talking about error reporting.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The nickname for the feature known as Windows Error Reporting is &#8220;Dr. Watson&#8221;. Where did that name come from? As you have probably guessed, The name Dr.&nbsp;Watson was inspired by the character of Dr.&nbsp;Watson, the assistant to Sherlock Holmes in the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. It is my understanding that the doctor was originally [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-34623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>The nickname for the feature known as Windows Error Reporting is &#8220;Dr. Watson&#8221;. Where did that name come from? As you have probably guessed, The name Dr.&nbsp;Watson was inspired by the character of Dr.&nbsp;Watson, the assistant to Sherlock Holmes in the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. It is my understanding that the doctor was originally [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}