History Lesson : Blinkenleitz
Posted by Dave Bath on 2009-02-01
I’m not here (scheduled post), but given that you are all using the internet, here is a sign usually found up on the walls of machine rooms of my younger days in the Elder Days.
First an English mock-German, then the German mock-English, then the Black-Letter Gothic version, .
Variously called "Blinkenleitz", "Blinkenlights" and "Blinkenlichten", there were minor modifications over the years.
Don’t use a BabelFish, you’ll have to say it out loud.
ACHTUNG!
ALLES TÜRISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS!
Das Komputermaschine ist nicht fü der gefingerpoken und mittengraben!
Oderwise ist easy to schnappen der Spingenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit Spitzensparksen.
Ist nicht für gewerken bei Dummkopfen. Der Rubbernecken Sightseeren keepen das cottonpicken Händer in das Pockets muss!
Zo relaxen und watschen der Blinkenleitz!
The Germans responded:
ATTENTION!
This room is fulfilled mit special electronische equippment. Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is allowed for die experts only!
So all the "lefthanders" stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked anderswhere!
Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished the blinkenlights.
Das Blinklichten
Grendel said
I remember this – in fact I’ve been able to recite it for years. I don’t know why – it just seemed to stick in my head!
Dave Bath said
Grendel: Aaaah, an ex-IT person running a coffee shop? Kinda makes sense. Do you sell Jolt from your cold drinks section?
Patrick Frigg said
and finaly blinkenlights became the name for the project of great light installations of the german chaos computer club (CCC) creating the world biggest interactive computer display.
http://www.blinkenlights.net/project
Nostalgia – I see your emoticon and raise you proper ASCII art « Balneus said
[...] Mind you, perhaps the most famous bit of ASCII art was from the early 1970s line-printer days (perhaps even the 1960s), and politically incorrect. On 132-column wide fan-folded paper, taking about 6 feet of printout, there was a depiction of a nude woman leaning up against a stool. It would be found in many different machine rooms, typically next to the "Blinkenleitz Poster. [...]
Peter Williams said
I saw this sign in some labs I worked in in Silicon around the turn of the century. These were commercially secure windowless labs where we worked long hours. The long periods without natural light sucked the happiness out of many of the people who worked in them. The signs on the wall advising against gefingerpoken und mittengraben were a high point of my time in those labs.