waldo

[From Robert A. Heinlein's story Waldo]

1. A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s they were named after the invention described by Heinlein in the story, which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic term telefactoring, this technology is of intense interest to NASA for tasks like space station maintenance.

2. At Harvard (particularly by Tom Cheatham and students), this is used instead of foobar as a metasyntactic variable and general nonsense word. See foo, bar, foobar, quux.

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(n.)
[after the fictional inventor of such a device in a story by Robert A. Heinlein (published as by "Anson MacDonald"); see 1942 quote] a remotely-operated body, arm, etc. used variously to extend the user's natural abilities, perform work in an inhospitable environment or at a distance, etc. Hence waldo-ized, adj. Compare body-waldo.

• 1942 A. MacDonald Waldo Astounding SF (Aug.) № 16: Even the [...] humanoid gadgets known universally as "waldoes" [...] passed through several generations of development [...] in Waldo's machine shop before he redesigned them for mass production. The first of them [...] had been designed to enable Waldo to operate a metal lathe.
• 1957 R. Silverberg One-Way Journey World of Thousand Colors (1984) № 131: We make a good team on the waldoes.
• 1973 J. Tiptree, Jr. Girl Who Was Plugged In Screwtop/Girl Who Was Plugged In (1989) № 18: But Delphi is no robot. Call her a waldo if you must. The fact is she's just a girl, a real live girl with her brain in an unusual place.
• 1978 D.A. Stanwood Memory of Eva Ryker № 30: The bathyscaphs are both equipped with remote manipulators — the experts call them "Waldos" — for working under the extreme pressure.
• 1982 W. Gibson Burning Chrome T. Shippey Oxford Book of SF (1992) № 500: I was working late in the loft one night, shaving down a chip, my arm off and the little waldo jacked straight into the stump.
• 1987 T. Easton Analog SF/Sci. Fact (Sept.) № 165/1: In Pohl's case, the aliens are using humans as organic waldoes that permit them to meet and bargain for Earth's wealth, and the humans be damned.
• 1993 K.S. Robinson Red Mars (1993) № 373: We're like dwarves in a waldo [...]. One of those really big waldo excavators. We're inside it and supposed to be moving a mountain, and instead of using the waldo capabilities we're leaning out of a window and digging with teaspoons.
• 1996 D. Pringle, et al. Ultimate Ency. of SF № 106/3: The climax comes when Ripley, clad in waldo-ized battle gear, takes on head-to-head the queen of the alien hive in a dazzling set-piece.

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