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A COUPLE of weeks ago, I stumbled across a strange video on called “SANS ICS HyperEncabulator”. In it, a suave man in a suit explained this new “cybersecurity” machine, gesturing at an impressive refrigerator-sized device, hailing its ability to be “sinosinclastic without sacrificing both normative reality and AI-informed modalities”. He then explained that a previous generation of this device, the retro-encabulator, was made with “prefabulated amulite surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing”. Not so with the HyperEncabulator! Unlike its predecessors, he said, the HyperEncabulator “operates totally under the principle of colonic effluvium expulsion”.

I had to know more. After a few searchulations and intertronular queries, I discovered that there is a rich history of encabulation. This technobabble satire actually started back in 1944, when a student named John Hellins Quick described a “turbo-encabulator” for the student journal of the . Quick noted that the “two spurving bearings were in a direct line with the pentametric fan”. That was important because “the latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzelvanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented”.

His engineering in-joke went viral – or at least the 1940s version of viral – when a Time magazine columnist referenced the turbo-encabulator in a 1946 article about new inventions. Amused readers building on the joke, enquiring about the “dingle arm” and noting that “if the bearings are lubricated with warm smortch they will not grunch”.

Throughout the encabulator’s history, Quick’s words have been used and reused – even in the HyperEncabulator pitch I saw from 2022. In nearly every retelling, we hear about avoiding “side fumbling” and learn about “prefabulated amulite”. Many of the film versions include Quick’s entire description, while adding their own embellishments.

The first known movie about this astonishing device came in the late 1970s. According to , he and his crew had just finished making some corporate films for GMC Trucks in Detroit, Michigan, and were messing around in the studio with voice-over actor Bud Haggert. Haggert had made hundreds of industrial instruction films and was sick of reading technobabble, so he asked if Rondot would film him reading a script about what he called the “turbo-encabulator”.

The result was hilarious. He describes a weird device with “prefabulated amulite” that had the astonishing ability to avoid all those pesky problems with “side fumbling”. For nearly 2 minutes, he gestures at a drawing of what looks like some kind of fuel injector, extolling the benefits of its ability to “automatically synthesise cardinal grammeters” in a rich monotone. Not to be outdone, Chrysler quickly created its own .

The people making these videos weren’t engineers satirising engineering papers, they were communications specialists making fun of their corporate educational materials. And the corporations were in on the joke, allowing their brands to appear in these videos. Encabulator movies were a humblebrag, a way of showing off the company’s technological prowess without seeming too elitist.

It was inevitable that the encabulator joke would move into the realm of computers. After all, the computer industry currently reigns supreme when it comes to highly technical but nonsensical claims about its products.

In 1997, electronics and software company Rockwell Automation created a “retro encabulator” video. Noah Rosenberg, who worked at Rockwell at the time, told me that it was “the actor having fun, just blowing off steam”. The film itself, he said, was an “early example of a meme… These things would get bootlegged on physical media, people who had two VCRs would make you a copy… Back then if 100 people saw something you made it was a hit.” And the hit lives on. The SANS ICS video I saw was a direct sequel to Rockwell’s retro encabulator video, even using the same actor.

What has fuelled this peculiar meme for almost 80 years? There is the obvious answer: engineers have a pretty good sense of humour about absurd technical language. But something else is being satirised too: the way that marketing often uses scientific-sounding phrases to trick people into buying things they don’t need – especially if we are worried about side fumbling!

Most of the pitches I get for NFTs and crypto-coins sound like they are coated in prefabulated amulite. As long as we stay thirsty for scammy tech that promises us the world but gives us empty wallets instead, the encabulator will never get old.