molly-guard

Advertisement

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

molly-guard

/mol'ee-gard/ [University of Illinois] A shield to prevent tripping of some Big Red Switch by clumsy or ignorant hands. Originally used of the plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice in one day. Later generalised to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment. [Jargon File]

Word of the day · Oct 19About this word
notoriousadjective

What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz

The Jargon File

molly-guard /mol'ee·gard/, n.

[University of Illinois] A shield to prevent tripping of some Big Red Switch by clumsy or ignorant hands. Originally used of the plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice in one day. Later generalized to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment. In hardware catalogues, you'll see the much less interesting description “ guarded button”.

Advertisement