molly-guard

/mol'ee-gard/ [University of Illinois] A shield to prevent

tripping of some Big Red Switch by clumsy or ignorant hands.

Originally used of the plexiglass covers improvised for the

BRS on an IBM 4341 after a programmer's toddler daughter

(named Molly) frobbed it twice in one day. Later generalised

to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and

networking equipment.

[Jargon File]