If you remember the days before digital rights management (DRM) you also remember having to connect a piece of hardware to your PC to make a piece of software work. The hardware required to activate your software was commonly referred to as a ‘Smart Key.’ Smart keys or dongles are plugged into a computer port and controlled your access to one or more software applications – early copyright protection.
The first time I ran into a “smart key” was setting up an Avid video editing system on a fancy new PowerMac G3 back in the day. More recently I saw techs struggle to set up a way to use a “not so smart key” in a high availability VM environment. “Dongle” now refers to “any small module that plugs in and sticks out of a socket.” But why are these things commonly call dongles and where did the weird word actually come from? That’s a matter of debate — The Atlantic dangles several promising origin stories.
Dongle origin stories
A Poetic Origin – The oldest theory is that dongle came, from the literary world. The article explains that the word “dongle” has been frequently used in poetry, as an onomatopoeic term for the ringing of bells (as in “ding-dong”). As an example, this 1915 poem, “The Bells of Berlin”:
The Bells of Berlin, how they hearten the Hun
(Oh dingle dong dangle ling dongle ding dee);
No matter what devil’s own work has been done
They chime a loud chant of approval, each one,
Till the people feel sure of their place in the sun
(Oh dangle ding dongle dong dingle ding dee).
Ummmm – Does that ring a bell with anybody?
A College Entrance Exam – If the poetry idea does not ring true for you – the author offers another theory. They found a claim by Ian Kemmish in a chat about the etymology of “dongle” has its roots in a logic question in a Cambridge college entrance exam.
The first time I saw the word was … in 1976 … It was a “logic” question. The question 
described a mythical computer with various controls … described various combinations of control actions and their outcomes (‘the babbocks break’, ‘the dongles droop’ etc) … ‘dongle’ was coined by someone who had taken that paper … remembered the word used to describe something on a computer that drooped….
Well – Does that origin story make the grade?
Another UK theory – The University of Pennsylvania’s language log says the word ‘dongle’ emerged around 1980. They base the claim on the U.K. magazine MicroComputer Printout’s report that dongle, “has been appearing in many articles with reference to security systems for computer software.”
A Madison Avenue Invention – If U.K. origins don’t work – the article tries to sell you another one. The word “dongle” appears in a 1992 ad for the information-security company Rainbow Technologies (SafeNet >> Thales), in Byte Magazine. The ad claimed that “dongle” was a derivation of its inventor, Mr. “Don Gall.” This was untrue, Ben Zimmer on the NYT notes, that the story, “was so egregiously false that the company happily owned up to it as a marketing ploy when pressed …”
A Corruption of the Word “Dangle”- According to P.B. Schneck in the 1999 IEEE paper Persistent access control to prevent piracy of digital information “… the word may be a corruption of ‘dangle,’ … given the shape of most dongles … though it doesn’t directly explain the shift in vowels form “a” to “o.”
It is Magic – The Atlantic seems to give up and attributed the origin of “dongle” to an unknown neologizer. They conclude that “dongle” just sprung up from the minds of some unknown figure in a process of “de novo creation.” One expert blames the phenomena of phonesthesia, or sound symbolism. He believes dongle, ” … appeared out of the blue in recent decades — among them bling, bonkers, bungee, dweeb, glitzy, gunk, and wonk.”
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Despite not knowing why we call them dongles – dongles are still with us.
Want to connect your laptop to a television? You’ll need a dongle.
Want to track your dog’s activity? Buy a dongle.
Trying Chromecast? You’ll also be dongling.
They are still causing much frustration and controversy.
The ultimate solution to the HA VM dongle problems was to and replace the application – In the interim, they used a Digi usb anywhere device to get more than one VM to connect to the Digi device.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
