Bootstrap loader

Booting was first described in the 1950s as the "bootstrap technique", so is short for bootstrap and derives from the phrase to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps. The earliest known recorded use of "boot" as the shortened form for "bootstrap" is 1975. The usage calls attention to the requirement that, if most software is loaded onto a computer by other software already running on the computer, some mechanism must exist to load the initial software onto the computer. Early computers used a variety of ad-hoc methods to get a small program (the bootstrap loader or bootstrap) into memory to solve this problem. The invention of ROM of various types solved this paradox by allowing computers to be shipped with a start-up program, stored in the boot ROM of the computer, that could not be erased. Growth in the capacity of ROM has allowed ever more elaborate start-up procedures to be implemented.