computer jargon This glossary of computer hardware terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to computer hardware, i.e. the physical and structural components of computers, architectural issues, and peripheral devices. A ...

, blinkenlights are diagnostic lights on

front panel A front panel was used on early electronic computers to display and allow the alteration of the state of the machine's internal CPU register, registers and computer memory, memory. The front panel usually consisted of arrays of electric light, ...

s of old

mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

s. More recently the term applies to status lights of modern network hardware (modems, network hubs, etc.). Blinkenlights disappeared from more recent computers for a number of reasons, the most important being the fact that with faster CPUs a human can no longer interpret the processes in the computer on the fly. Though more sophisticated UI mechanisms have since been developed, blinkenlights may still be present as additional status indicators and familiar

skeuomorph A skeuomorph (also spelled skiamorph, ) is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort t ...

Etymology

The term has its origins in hacker humor and is taken from a famous (often

blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter or black-letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for ...

-Gothic) mock warning sign written in a mangled form of German. Variants of the sign were relatively common in computer rooms in English-speaking countries from the early 1960s. One version read: Some versions of the sign end with the word ''blinkenlights''. The sign dates back as far as 1955 at

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, and a copy was reported at

London University The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

computer facility. Although the sign might initially appear to be in German and uses an approximation of

German grammar The grammar of the German language is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages. Although some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that o ...

, it is composed largely of words that are either near-homonyms of English words or (in the cases of the longer words) actual English words that are rendered in a faux-German spelling. As such, the sign is generally comprehensible by many English speakers regardless of whether they have any fluency in German, but mostly incomprehensible to German speakers with no knowledge of English. Much of the humor in these signs was their intentionally incorrect language. Michael J. Preston relates the sign as being posted above

photocopier A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...

s in offices as a warning not to mess with the machine in the first print reference from 1974. The sign is also reported to have been seen on an

electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing it ...

at the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

in the 1950s. Such pseudo-German parodies were common in Allied machine shops during and following

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, and an example photocopy is shown in the ''

Jargon File The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT AI Lab ...

''. The ''Jargon File'' also mentions that German hackers had in turn developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster, in broken English:

Actual blinkenlights

Thinking Machines CM-5 LED pattern animation

The

Connection Machine The Connection Machine (CM) is a member of a series of massively parallel supercomputers sold by Thinking Machines Corporation. The idea for the Connection Machine grew out of doctoral research on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann arch ...

, a -processor parallel computer designed in the mid-1980s, was a black cube with one side covered with a grid of red blinkenlights; the sales demo had them evolving

Conway's Game of Life The Game of Life, also known as Conway's Game of Life or simply Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial ...

patterns. The two CPU load monitors on the front of

BeBox The BeBox is a discontinued personal computer from Be Inc., running the company's operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), s ...

es were also called "blinkenlights". This word gave its name to several projects, including screen savers, hardware gadgets, and other nostalgic endeavours. Notable such enterprises include, but are not limited to, the German

Chaos Computer Club The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is Europe's largest association of Hacker (computer security), hackers with 7,700 registered members. Founded in 1981, the association is incorporated as an ''eingetragener Verein'' in Germany, with local chapters ...

Project Blinkenlights Project Blinkenlights was a light installation in the Haus des Lehrers building at the Alexanderplatz in Berlin that transformed the building front into a giant low-resolution monochrome computer screen. The installation was created by th ...

and the Blinkenlights Archaeological Institute.

References

External links

{{Commons category
DEC indicator panels
Computer jargon Computer humour Tech humour Macaronic language

Etymology

Actual blinkenlights

See also

References

Further reading

External links