15 lines
2.4 KiB
HTML
15 lines
2.4 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>engine</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../E.html" title="E"/><link rel="previous" href="empire.html" title="empire"/><link rel="next" href="English.html" title="English"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">engine</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="empire.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">E</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="English.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="engine"/><dt xmlns="" id="engine"><b>engine</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> 1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function but can't be
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used without some kind of <a href="../F/front-end.html"><i class="glossterm">front end</i></a>. Today we have,
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especially, <span class="firstterm">print engine</span>: the guts of
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a laser printer. </p></dd><dd><p> 2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot
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of noisy crunching, such as a <span class="firstterm">database
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engine</span>.</p></dd><dd><p>The hacker senses of <span class="firstterm">engine</span> are
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actually close to its original, pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill,
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clever device, or instrument (the word is cognate to
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‘ingenuity’). This sense had not been completely eclipsed by
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the modern connotation of power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's
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time, which explains why he named the stored-program computer that he
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designed in 1844 the <span class="firstterm">Analytical
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Engine</span>.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="empire.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../E.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="English.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">empire </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> English</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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