Blinkenlights (jargon)

The Blinkenlights (also blinkenlichten ) is a made-up word from a warning sign mocking text in a spelling that satirizes German and Dutch. The origin of the expression could be traced back to the year 1955 in data centers of the company IBM . The word refers to the warning lights on a machine console . In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, such texts spread around the world and also appeared in a different form in Germany.

Text example

An earlier version:

Attention everything Lookenskeepers! The computer machine is not for finger poking and digging in the middle. It is easy to snap the jump work, blow blown fuses and poppencorken with top parking. Is not for trades in the dump head. The rubbernecken visible seeren keep the cotten-pickenen hans in the pockets ; relax and watch the blinking light.

A modified form from Germany, in which the expression Blinkenlights occurs:

ATTENTION This room is fullfilled with special electronic equippment. Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is allowed for the experts only! So all the “lefthanders” stay away and do not disrupt the brainstorming of here working intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked elsewhere! Also: please keep still and only watch astaunished the blinkenlights.

Such and similar texts were written during the Second World War and afterwards under the Allies as a satirical of the Germans.

See also

• Blinkenlights project

literature

• Michael-Alexander Beisecker: The lexicon of PC terms . Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft, 2004, ISBN 978-3-8125-0592-5 , p. 65 ( limited online version (Google Books) )
• John Chirillo: Hack Attacks Encyclopedia: A Complete History of Hacks, Cracks, Phreaks, and Spies over Time . John Wiley & Sons, 2001, ISBN 0-471-05589-1 , pp. 725-726.
• Steven Pinker : The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language . Harper 2006, ISBN 0-06-095833-2 , p. 113.
• Eric S. Raymond : The New Hacker's Dictionary . MIT Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-262-68092-9 , p. 74 ( restricted online version (Google Books) )
• Erin Jansen: NetLingo: the Internet Dictionary . Netlingo, 2002, ISBN 978-0-9706396-7-7 , p. 119 ( restricted online version (Google Books) )

Web links

• Blinkenlights . Urban Dictionary

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Jargon File, (version 4.4.7) , entry in the Jargon File , accessed on December 30, 2009