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From: lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards,news.misc,rec.games.trivia
Subject: Re: Re: History
Message-ID: <2766@eecae.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Sep-87 16:04:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: eecae.2766
Posted: Thu Sep 17 16:04:11 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 15:38:45 EDT
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Organization: Engineering, Michigan State U., E. Lansing MI
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Xref: mnetor comp.misc:1237 comp.unix.questions:4133 comp.unix.wizards:4307 news.misc:932 rec.games.trivia:804

>> I know about the derivation of the ubiquitous "foo bar", but
> I seem to recall reading something in William Safire's column in the
> New York Times Sunday Magazine about the term's stemming from the
> Marine (?) acronym "fubar" and from an early computer instruction
> "BAR".  But Safire is generally further off only on teenage lingo than
> he is on computer stuff. Anybody else?

The story as I have it, is it started with a prof at one of the large 
computer schools way back when (MIT?) and in his digital logic class
he'd define a signal named "foo" as a generic name for the line, then
when this line would go through a complementor it would be "foobar"
This was done to see if he could get some chuckles, "foobar" sounding
the same as "FUBAR" meaning Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. 

As a side note, I've taught a few classes and it is next to impossible
to get even one titter out of a class of 75 people at the most obvious
(and humorous) joke.


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