The Unwanted Blog

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.

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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.