Percussive maintenance

Percussive maintenance, also known as percussion therapy or a technical tap, is a term used to describe the physical concussion of an ill-behaved device to make it work — that is to say, hitting it. The origins and practice of the term are unknown, although some suggest the act became commonplace with the introduction of vacuum tube electronics. The term is a play on "preventive maintenance".

Lane's Principle

Lane's Principle is a scientific theorem which refers to the Technical Tap. The Principle states: "There is no problem which cannot be solved by suitable application of blunt force." The identity of the author is unknown, but the saying was included in the MIT SIPB "fortune" program, which dispensed tech-related quotes on demand as early as 1989 (this program became used as the basis for Internet cookies, as it dispensed "fortune cookies").

Famous taps in history

• In 1969 during the Apollo 12 mission, Pete Conrad was working on a piece of equipment called the ALSEP. He was trying to remove its power source from its case so that he could insert it into the device but was having difficulty. Alan Bean suggested he hit it with a hammer. Conrad resisted at first but eventually gave it a tap. It worked, leading Bean to quip, "Don't come to the moon without a hammer."^[1]
• In December 2006, NASA astronauts Robert "Beamer" Curbeam and Sunita "Suni" Williams spent a generous amount of time shaking and pushing a stubborn solar panel into its case so they could move it to a different location on the International Space Station.^[2]

References