What is a gremlin?
A gremlin is a little creature said to play tricks on machines and cause breakdowns. It is not a figure of old folklore but a relatively new fairy born in the 20th century, which came to be talked about among Royal Air Force pilots during World War II.
The pilots’ gremlins
Whenever engines ran rough or instruments failed in flight for no known reason, pilots began to say, half-jokingly, that “gremlins did it.” Gremlins were said to sneak into aircraft and chew on wiring or drain fuel. The origin of the name is unclear, but it is thought to have spread as humor to ease the tension of dangerous missions. Like the foo fighters, it is one of the strange stories born in the wartime skies.
Dahl’s book and the film Gremlins
The writer Roald Dahl, himself an air force pilot, wrote his first book, The Gremlins, in 1943, introducing these creatures to the world. In 1984 the film Gremlins was released and became a huge hit, along with rules such as “don’t get them wet” and “never feed them after midnight.” Even today, unexplained machine breakdowns are sometimes called the “gremlin effect.”
