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"Turbo Encabulator" the Original

Dave Rondot · 3.5M views · 2010-04-09 · 1:50

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Overview

The earliest filmed version of the Turbo Encabulator technical-jargon parody, shot in the late 1970s with narrator Bud Haggert. It deadpans a stream of meaningless engineering language.

On Hacker News

Used as the canonical reference for the jargon-parody trope, and as a joke whenever technobabble appears.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2016–2026

Topics

Satire & parodyMechanical & precision engineering
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turbo encabulatorparodytechnobabblebud haggertengineering humor

What people said

Joel_Mckay · 2025-11 · Recommendation

"Still it's amusing how Whitney's style seems to personally offend people" So it was for the lols after all... Notably, a Lisp interpreter written in Lisp is a common assignment for second year CS students. In a production setting, there is little reason to misappropriate resources for such toys. Bud Haggert still teaches smart people something very important about communication with interdisciplinary crowds: [VIDEO] Doug Zongker's presentation similarly instructs people how to make better presentations to peers by demonstrating what not to do: [LINK] Best of luck =3

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causality0 · 2023-11 · Recommendation

I don't know why people are always posting the Rockwell version when the older Turbo Emcabulator video is far superior. [VIDEO]

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NelsonMinar · 2021-07 · Recommendation

There's a proud tradition of this kind of parody: the Turboencabluator is one of the most famous in engineering, a joke that goes back to 1944. [LINK] Bud Haggart's industrial training videos for the Turboencabulator from the 70s/80s are things of beauty. See [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Dave Rondot, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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