Hi, welcome to a featured episode of the AXIOM Insights learning and development podcast, I'm Scott Rutherford. For the past few years, we've been releasing podcast episodes focused on driving performance through learning.

This episode isn’t one of those.

This April first, we released a video called the Strategic Learning Encabulator. It’s on Youtube and you can also access it from the web address learningencabulator.com, or you can get there from the episode page for this episode at axiomlearningsolutions.com/podcast.

I've been a fan of the Encabulator spoofs since I first saw the version done in the 1990s. It turns out, there's a much longer history behind it, and I wanted to take this episode to share that history with you, and to give credit to the folks behind it.

The first version of the Turbo Encabulator appears more than 80 years ago, in England, in 1944, in an article called "The Turbo-Encabulator in Industry." Engineering student John Hellins Quick published the original in the Students Quarterly Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. If you go to the Learning Encabulator page, you can read the full text of the original. Or, if you want to hang out, I’ll do my best to read it as voiceover at the end of this episode.

It became famous in technical documentation and engineering circles thanks to its authoritative-sounding and technically complex nonsense. And some of the jibberish terms that first appeared in the 1944 versions are carried forward into the later versions.

Jumping ahead a few years, the next version on record was put out as a joke by staff at General Electric in 1962. GE put out a technical specification sheet for their version of the Turboencabulator – if you’re listening to the audio version of this episode, you can see it on the episode page or by watching the video version. It carries forward some of the wonderfully absurd jargon from the original, like the use of “six gyro-controlled anti-gravic marzel-vanes” and instructions for its use in “unilateral phase detractors.”

The next chapter in the Encabulator story comes in 1977, thanks to actor and training video presenter Bud Haggart. Haggart was an award-winning broadcaster who once served as president of the Detroit chapter of the Screen Actors Guild, and had a long career in the Detroit area doing industrial training videos and similar voiceover projects. As the story goes, he and a film crew had just finished a day of shooting video for the master technician training program at Chrysler and he was asked to do a version of the Encabulator bit to camera. As the story goes, Bud’s producer was feeding him the script in real time through an earpiece. Here it is.

VIDEO CLIP: Turboencabulator, presented by Bud Haggart

The next chapter in the Encabulator story comes in the 1990s. Actor and training presenter Mike Kraft did his take, using a script similar to the prior version, with some updates and nods to a company he was working with at the time, Rockwell Automation. Here’s Mike Kraft’s version, called the Retro Encabulator.

VIDEO CLIP: Retroencabulator, presented by Mike Kraft

Kraft appeared as a guest on the Manufacturing Happy Hour podcast in 2021 and in that interview, he described how his version got rediscovered on social media, on sites like ebaums world and reddit. I’ll have a link to that interview on the episode page.

In more recent years, others have taken on the Encabulator parody, and there are several circulating on social media and Youtube. And while most of these make some adjustments, each one carries references forward from the earlier versions – many of which can still be traced back to the original print version more than 80 years ago.

So why did I want to take a stab at the Encabulator. Good question.

For one, I thought it would be fun.

But with a slightly more serious lens, I like the fact that the Encabulator spoof is focused on tearing down impenetrable jargon. In the learning and development world, we’ve got plenty of jargon of our own, and sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is to edit and simplify. Because I think we’re all better off when we can be clear and straightforward – it’s better for us, better for our colleagues, and ultimately better for our learners.

So with that, here’s my shot at voicing the original Turboencabulator text, as published in 1944. Wish me luck.

"For a number of years now, work has been proceeding in order to bring prefection to the crudely conceived idea of a machine that would work to not only supply inverse reactive current, for use in unilateral phase detectors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronising cardinal grammeters.  Such a machine is the 'Turboencabulator'.  Basically, the only new principle involved is that instead of the power being generated by the relaxive motion of conductors and fluxes, it is produced by the modial interactions of magneto-reluctance and capacitive directance.

"The original machine had a base-plate of prefabulated amulite, surrounded by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings were in direct line with the pentametric fan, the latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzelvanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar vaneshaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented.  The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-delta type placed in panendermic semiboloid solts in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a non-reversible termic pipe to the differential girdlespring on the 'up' end of the grammeter.

"Forty-one manestically placed grouting brushes were arrranged to feed into the rotor slip stream a mixture of high S-value phenyhydrobenzamine and 5 percent reminative tetraiodohexamine.  Both these liquids have specific pericosities given by p=2.4 Cn where n is the diathecial evolute of retrograde temperature phase disposition and C is the Chomondeley's annual grillage coefficient. Initially, n was measured with the aid of a metapolar pilfrometer, but up to the present date nothing has been found to equal the transcetental hopper dadoscope.

"Electrical engineers will appreciate the difficulty of nubbing together a regurgitative purwell and a superaminative wennel-sprocket.  Indeed, this proved to be a stumbling block to further development until, in 1943, it was found that the use of anhydrous nagling pins enabled a kyptonastic boiling shim to be tankered.

"The early attempts to construct a sufficiently robust spiral decommutator failed largely because of lack of appreciation of the large quasi-pietic stresses in the gremlin studs; the latter were specially designed to hold the roffit bars to the spamshaft.  When, however, it was discovered that wending could be prevented by the simple addition of teeth to socket, almost perfect running was secured.

"The operating point is maintained as near as possible to the HF rem peak by constantly fromaging the bituminous spandrels.  This is a distinct advance on the standard nivelsheave in that no drammock oil is required after the phase detractors have remissed.

"Undoubtedly, the turboencabulator has now reached a very high level of technical development.  It has been successfully used for operating nofer trunnions.  In addition, whenever a barescent skor motion is required, it may be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocating dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration."

Thanks for watching and listening.

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