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Blinkenlights

In computer jargon, blinkenlights are diagnostic lights on front panels of old mainframe computers. More recently the term applies to status lights of modern network hardware (modems, network hubs, etc.).[1] Blinkenlights disappeared from more recent computers for a number of reasons, the most important being the fact that with faster CPUs a human can no longer interpret the processes in the computer on the fly.[1] Though more sophisticated UI mechanisms have since been developed, blinkenlights may still be present as additional status indicators and familiar skeuomorphs.[citation needed] Etymology[edit] The term has its origins in hacker humor and is taken from a famous (often blackletter-Gothic) mock warning sign written in a mangled form of German.

The term has its origins in hacker humor and is taken from a famous (often blackletter-Gothic) mock warning sign written in a mangled form of German. Blinkenlights on the NSA's FROSTBURG supercomputer from the 1990sTypical LED pattern of a Thinking Machines CM-5The bits and digits in the earliest mechanical and vacuum tube-based computers were typically large and few, making it easy to see (and often hear) activity. The Connection Machine, a 65536-processor parallel computer designed in the mid-1980s, was a black cube with one side covered with a grid of red blinkenlights; the sales demo had them evolving Conway's Game of Life patterns.

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