Veeblefetzer is a word usually used facetiously as a placeholder name for any obscure or complicated object or mechanism, such as automobile parts, computer code and model railroad equipment.
A 19th-century Yiddish language slang word with limited usage is generally accepted as the origin. In German, the verb fetzen means to "rip" or "shred". Textile mills of that period were crammed with loud, complicated and wildly active machinery.[1]
During the 1940s, the inventor Alfred J. Gross, a pioneer of mobile communications, made an association of the word with modern technology. Gross invented the walkie-talkie and developed cordless remote telephone signaling (the precursor to the pager). He was the father of Citizens' Band radio, and for his "handle" he used the pseudonym Phineas Thadeus Veeblefetzer.
A few years later, Harvey Kurtzman brought the word into popular usage in his comic book Mad. In the Kurtzman and Will Elder satire of the comic strip Gasoline Alley, titled "Gasoline Valley!", in Mad 15 (September 1954), the character Skizziks opens a shop to repair cracked veeblefetzers. In subsequent issues, Kurtzman used the word for spoofs of big business, with North American Veeblefetzer featured in satires of in-house company newsletters, corporate annual reports and more.