The turboencabulator is a fictional machine whose technobabble description is an in-joke among engineers. The following quote is from the original 1944 Students' Quarterly Journal article by "J. H. Quick".
History
The original technical description of the "turbo-encabulator" was written by British graduate studentJohn Hellins Quick. It was published in 1944 by the British Institution of Electrical EngineersStudents' Quarterly Journal as also noted by consulting firm Arthur D. Little in a 1995 reprint of Quick's description, and giving Quick's full name. The earliest written U.S. source may have been in 1946, in an Arthur D. Little Industrial Bulletin. An early popular American reference to the turbo-encabulator appeared in an article by New York lawyer Bernard Salwen in Time on April 15, 1946. Part of Salwen's job was to review technical manuscripts. He was amused by the jargon and passed on the description from the Arthur D. Little pamphlet. Time got with the gag, featuring the device in a May 6, 1946 issue, described as "An adjunct to the turbo-encabulator, employed whenever a barescent skor motion is required." A month later a response to reader mail on the feature appeared in the June 3, 1946 issue: In 1962 a turboencabulator data sheet was created by engineers at General Electric's Instrument Department, in West Lynn, Massachusetts. It quoted from the previous sources and was inserted into the General Electric Handbook. The turboencabulator data sheet had the same format as the other pages in the G.E. Handbook. The engineers added "Shure Stat" in "Technical Features", which was peculiar only to the Instrument Department, and included the first known graphic representation of a "manufactured" Turboencabulator using parts made at the Instrument Department. In Bud Haggart, an actor who appeared in many industrial training films in and around Detroit, performed in the first film realization of the description and operation of the "Turboencabulator", using a truncated script adapted from Quick's article. Bud convinced director Dave Rondot and the film crew to stay after the filming of an actual GMC Trucks project training film to realize the Turboencabulator spot. In the Chrysler Corporation "manufactured" the Turboencabulator in a video spoof, with Haggart reprising his role from the GM film. Rockwell Automation "manufactured" the renamed Retro-Encabulator in another video spoof in. On April Fools' Day 2013, Hank Green released a SciShow episode on YouTube entitled "The Retro-Proto-Turbo-Encabulator." On April 1, 2016, PATH "introduced" the Micro-Encabulator on their YouTube Channel as a "new game-changing global health technology featuring hydrocoptic miniaturization and advanced panametric fam alignment." April 2020Viper Innovations continued this historic gag with a presentation of the Turbo Encabulator 2.0 with quantic IoT.
