For anyone wondering about the origin of this particular evocative phrase for those regrettable times when one must intervene with the hardware personally, it dates back to those wonderful round-about-the-Industrial-Revolution-equivalent days, when life was steampunk only without the punk, and when computation was done and equipment was run by twelve tons of brass cogs – which is to say, Stannic cogitators, which is in turn to say, Babbage engines gone critical – powered by mighty pressures.

And as such, a sysadmin’s traditional debugging tools included a monkey-wrench and a 14 lb. lump hammer.