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A linguistic aside... I always thought it was 'big iron' as in something big and made of 'iron'. The idea of 'Big Irons' makes me think of ironing shirts with

A linguistic aside... I always thought it was 'big iron' as in something big and made of 'iron'. The idea of 'Big Irons' makes me think of ironing shirts with some super-sized, barely lift-able iron rather than something the size of my Philips iron. I imagine the steam from a 'big iron' could be quite fearsome. Having made the link I now have a sensible name for the server room where I work. We didn't put a sign on that door because it would be helpful for thieves. 'Ironing Room' as in what hotels have might be more befitting even though a server and a firewall does not make 'big iron'. Either way 'big irons' is now added to my lexicon to go along with other deliberate misspellings including 'nucular' and 'skelington'.

jacques_chester 11y ago
The other name I've seen used is "dinosaur pen", and by extension the operators are "dinosaur herders".
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Sounds like it comes from the same world as pet (one physical server, one job, carefully watched and maintained by admins) and cattle (containers/VMs/cloud where you can go for 1 to 1 million in a matter of seconds) servers.
msbarnett 11y ago
I generally hear it used as an uncountable noun ("how much Big Iron would we need to throw at the problem?" rather than "how many...") so to me the title would read better as "Why does Big Iron still exist?"
jschwartzi 11y ago
I think the origin of the word might lie in country and western. An iron is slang for a handgun, and a big iron is a big handgun.
xkcd-sucks 11y ago
The term's been used to describe high-displacement iron block engines, exemplified by those in mid-20th century american muscle cars. They produce lots of noise and torque, and aren't very fuel efficient. Like a mainframe. The other sort of big iron makes a lot of heat and flattens out big wrinkles, and ruins delicate fabrics-- also like a mainframe.
kens 11y ago
I did some searching on Google Books, and rather surprisingly it looks like "Big Iron" was first used in the 1960s to describe airplanes, coming from "Big Iron Bird". In the 1980s it was used for computers.

jacques_chester 11y ago

The other name I've seen used is "dinosaur pen", and by extension the operators are "dinosaur herders".

digi_owl 11y ago
Sounds like it comes from the same world as pet (one physical server, one job, carefully watched and maintained by admins) and cattle (containers/VMs/cloud where you can go for 1 to 1 million in a matter of seconds) servers.

msbarnett 11y ago

I generally hear it used as an uncountable noun ("how much Big Iron would we need to throw at the problem?" rather than "how many...") so to me the title would read better as "Why does Big Iron still exist?"

jschwartzi 11y ago

I think the origin of the word might lie in country and western. An iron is slang for a handgun, and a big iron is a big handgun.

xkcd-sucks 11y ago

The term's been used to describe high-displacement iron block engines, exemplified by those in mid-20th century american muscle cars. They produce lots of noise and torque, and aren't very fuel efficient. Like a mainframe. The other sort of big iron makes a lot of heat and flattens out big wrinkles, and ruins delicate fabrics-- also like a mainframe.

kens 11y ago

I did some searching on Google Books, and rather surprisingly it looks like "Big Iron" was first used in the 1960s to describe airplanes, coming from "Big Iron Bird". In the 1980s it was used for computers.