When you hear the word “gremlin,” the first image that comes to mind may be the unassuming, fluffy little creatures that turn vicious when fed aft

Ghosts in the Machine

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2024-11-02 03:00:04

When you hear the word “gremlin,” the first image that comes to mind may be the unassuming, fluffy little creatures that turn vicious when fed after midnight. The eponymous blockbuster movie—now celebrating its fortieth birthday—that introduced these beings to a wide audience is still celebrated as the quintessential horror-comedy. Hollywood gremlins are particularly interested in meddling with technological devices to cause serious accidents, and a voiceover at the end of the film ominously warns viewers that any unexplained problems with electrical devices in the home might be on account of a such a beastie lurking there. This tracks with their folkloric reputation.

Though the precise origin of the gremlin name is unclear, scholar Richard C. Clark suggests it’s linked to the Netherlandic verb grimmelen, meaning to swarm or overrun; begrimmelen, meaning to pollute or contaminate, is derived from it. The term has been traced back to 1920s Royal Naval Air Force slang, but it was during World War II, a time of rapid technological advances, that the lore evolved to such an extent that gremlins became full-fledged celebrities, characterized as pesky critters who crawled into plane machinery and destroyed it.

This wasn’t the first case of attributing unexpected mechanical defects to invisible pests. The popular term “bug” to describe technical glitches was used as early as 1876. Thomas Edison invoked the term to describe sudden difficulties in his inventions; “bugs,” he wrote, “show themselves and months of anxious watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success-or failure-is certainly reached.” The use of “themselves” endows these creatures with a curiously sentient quality, which would be expanded upon with the popularization of the idea of plane-meddling gremlins. For average aviators, there was every reason to fear sudden and unexpected malfunctions. Unlike in Edison’s case, an infestation of pesky minibeasts in aeronautic machinery could be a matter of life and death; the job of a pilot was extremely perilous and marred by deadly accidents.

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