I read “Mollyguard” (in Wiki, “kill switch”) as specifically “the shielding thing you flip up or otherwise overcome to get at the real big button that is super powerful” which comprised the glass you’re supposed to beak to get at the whatever.
Arming switches for weapons in jet fighters–many of them too are protected by a “are you sure you want to get at this switch to flip it” cover.
Has anyone besides wiki ever heard them called Mollyguards? And where does that word com from? Who was Molly?
I’ve operated equipment with them, but never heard of them called that.
I first heard the term several years ago.
If this is correct, she was a programmer’s daughter. Probably unrelated to molly bolts, however they may have been intended to keep out gun molls.
In a glossary of computer jargon that goes back at least a couple decades is this entry:
Huh. I was looking for my local F16 circuit board layout, but did come up with this: under “switches” (tons of 'em!) in a catalog for airplane people, they’re separately listed as “switch guards/covers”:
Wow, I haven’t seen that file in years and years!
I thought by now it would have been deprecated.
ETA: not a snark at quality of cite, which is primo; just a note on modern lexicography.
IBM “big iron” computers like the 360 had a rather large button that you pulled out in red with “EMERGENCY STOP” marked on it; I’m not quite sure what its purpose was, but it would shut down the entire computer immediately. This is what the original Molly pulled that led to the “Molly Guard” being installed.
Never heard the term before this thread, despite coming up in the tech industry.
Having had twins that thought the big, blue-ringed button on the front of CPUs was to be pushed immediately and every time encountered, including in homes and businesses being visited, I would have appreciated it.
I’ve heard of that term but haven’t heard it in years, not sure where I did originally hear it.
Most definitely a terminology that needs to be revived. I will refer to them as Mollyguards henceforth.
Since my 3 year old grandson has just started turning every switch in the house on, I’m calling them Marcusguards.
Dennis
What would be particularly cool would be to track down Molly. One would guess she would be in her 50’s by now. But given the apparent history of the term finding her should not actually be all that hard. It is likely she knows her special place in the world.
Finding people that relate to terms like this is a rather nice and rare thing.
The Jargon File dates back to 1975. The story may be older, so she could be in her 70s or 80s.
The Jargon File was under continuous revision through the 80s and 90s, and updated periodically even into the Naughties. (Maybe even this decade; I haven’t really checked the rev history lately.)
And the specific machine mentioned in the anecdote was introduced to the market in 1979, so that’s the EARLIEST that little Molly could have been a toddler. She’d be late-thirties, early-fourties.
Eric Raymond basically took ownership of the Jargon File in the 1990s, and he updates it every so often; you can find original ITS-era (that is, 1970s through mid-1980s) files online in various places, but the ITS culture collapsed when the PDP-10 series of mainframe computers was killed off without a successor in the 1980s and the cultural changes of the era made the file obsolete rather quickly after that. Raymond took over the file once the AI Lab was gone and the File’s original owners scattered.
The IBM 1130 at Cambridge University Engineering Dept had a similiar pull-switch, though IIRC it was labelled EMERGENCY PULL. The emergency in question was the computer catching fire. I was told that pulling it turned off all the power at once by separating multiple connectors, and reconnecting things required the expensive services of an IBM technician for a long time.
I don’t recall it having a mollyguard; if you needed it you needed it fast. But it was at least 4 feet off the ground and presumably required quite a hefty pull, so I don’t think there was much danger from toddlers.
I don’t think it was ever explicity stated, but it was generally held that pulling it for a laugh would get you booted out the university at amazing speed.