The world of engineering presentations is full of two things: technobabble and bullshit. The two concepts are, of course, far from mutually exclusive, and often enough are one and the same. This is especially true when the engineers themselves have:
A: A sense of humor
B: Management of the stereotypical “Pointy-Haired Boss” variety.
It is not uncommon for engineers to sprinkle their discussions and their presentations with in-jokes that they understand but expect that a good fraction of their audience won’t. This is exactly the sort of thing I *love* to do… and as a consequence, it’s exactly the sort of thing I always tried really hard *not* to do. You find out real fast that the corporate management drones might be technically ignorant buffoons… but the Army and Air Force colonels and generals and Navy captains and admirals typically are *not.*
One of the more common engineering in-jokes is the “Turbo-Encabulator.” A mythical device that can do all manner of wholly mythical things, it is every bit as important and relevant in engineering parlance as the magical materials “unobtanium,” “wishalloy” and “bolognium.” The Turbo-Encabulator apparently stretches back to 1942, according to this source. The original memo went like this:
———————————————–
24 August 1942
SUBJECT: Technical Description of the Turbo-Encabulator
TO: Engineers Concerned
1. INTRODUCTION
For a number of years now work has been proceeding in order to
bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of a machine that
would not only supply inverse reactive current for use in
unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of
automatically synchronizing cardinal grammeters.
Such a machine is the “Turbo-Encabulator”. Basically the only
new principle involved is that instead of power being generated
by the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it is produced
by the modial interaction of magneto reluctance and capacitive
directance.
2. DESCRIPTION OF MACHINE
The original machine had a base-plate of prefabulated amulite,
surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that
the two spurving bearings were in direct line with the
pentametric fan. The latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic
marzelvanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that
side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of
the normal lotus-o-delta type placed in panendermic semi boloid
slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by
a non reversible tremie pipe to the differential girdlespring on
the “up” end of the grammeters.
Forty-one manestically spaced grouting brushes were arranged to
feed into the rotor slip-stream a mixture of high-S value
phenylhydrobenzamine and five per cent reminative
tetryliodohexamine. Both of these liquids have specific
pericosities given by:
P = 2.5 * Cn ** 6.7
where “n” is the diathetical evolute of retrograde temperature
phase disposition and “C” is Cholmondeley’s annular grillage
coefficient. Initially “n” was measured with the aid of a
metapolar refractive pilfrometer (for a description of this
ingenious instrument, see L. E. Rumpelverstein in “Zeitschrift
fur Elektrotechnistatische Donnerblitze” vol. vii), but up to
the present date nothing has been found to equal the
transcendental hopper dadoscope (See “Proceedings of the
Peruvian Academy of Skatological Sciences” June 1914).
3. DISCUSSION
Electrical engineers will appreciate the difficulty of nubing
together a regurgitative purwell and a supramitive
wennelsprocket. Indeed this proved to be a stumbling block to
further development until, in 1942, it was found that the use of
anhydrous nangling pins enabled a kryptonastic bolling shim to
be tankered.
The early attempt to construct a sufficiently robust spiral
decommutator failed largely because of a lack of appreciation of
the large quasipiestic stresses in the gremlin studs; the latter
were specially designed to hold the reffit bars to the
spamshaft. When, however, it was discovered that wending could
be prevented by a simple addition to the living sockets, almost
perfect running was secured.
The operating point is maintained as near as possible to the
H.F. rem peak by constantly fromaging the bitumogeneous
spandrels. This is a distinct advance on the standard
nivelsheave in that no dramcock oil is required after the phase
detractors have remissed.
4. CONCLUSION
Undoubtedly the Turbo-Encabulator has now reached a very high
level of technical development. It has been successfully used
for operating nofer trunnions. In addition, whenever a barescent
skor motion is required, it may be employed in conjunction with
a drawn reciprocating angle arm to reduce sinusoidal
depleneration.
Original Signed By
ARTHUR D. LITTLE
———————————————–
By 1962, GE had produced a specification sheet for their very own Turbo-Encabulator:
Several Encabulator and Turbo-Encabulator presentations are available online. While modified to fit the particular industry/product of the company producing the videos, the presentations share many lines (basically all coming from the same basic script, a modification of the original memo), a commonality of complete seriousness, a whole lot of utter technobabble rubbish, and generally high production values. While there are a whole bunch of “encabulator” videos, the best ones are carried off with complete seriousness with no obvious gags. If you were not aware that the whole thing was a gag, you might simply think you were being barraged with jargon that you simply didn’t understand.
[youtube oIS5n9Oyzsc]
[youtube lVZ8Ko-nss4]
[youtube lBp5ag6SJH4]
[youtube MXW0bx_Ooq4]
There are two vitally important lessons to be learned from the Encabulator:
1: If you are in an industry loaded with jargon – engineering, say – here’s a way to both let off some steam *and* see who’s actually paying attention.
2: Now that you’re aware that there is a long history of people spending a whole lot of time and trouble to produce presentations and documents that are complete gibberish with no real meaning whatsoever (can you say “Die Glocke?”), you can keep an eye out for others. Keep in mind, the Turboencabulator may be used by the presenter as nothing more than an in-joke for light humor; or it could be used in a meaner way in order to get a laugh at *your* expense. It can be used as a way to both poke fun and to enlighten, as with the various efforts to ban the dangerous chemical Dihydrogen Monoxide or the Sokal Affair. And it can be used in truly sinister ways… by burying you under mounds of impenetrable gibberish, the real purpose can be obscured. The “Turboencabulator” can go under many names… the scientific/engineering jargon can be replaced with legalese, say, and the name “”Turboencabulator” can be replaced with something like, say, “To provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 202 of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2010.” Of course, when engineers try this kind of stunt, they are typically working alone, or in groups of maybe two or three… but when legislators do this, they have teams of hundreds of assistants standing reading to pour dumptrucks full of guvspeak into legislation. Note that this whole post, including the original Turbo-Encabulator memo, is less than three pages, which is about the limit for engineering humor. Anythign longer than that is pushing way beyond remotely resembling efficient use of tiem and resources. When someone throws a proposed legislation of 2,309 pages at you, you know something is up. I have long had the suspicion that the current bloated state of government might not be due to either of the usual causes (evil and incompetance), but due to government basically being a joke that’s gotten out of hand and that those behind the gag haven’t figured out how to end it.
