bootstrap / boot up

A self-made person is one who lifts or pulls oneself up by one’s bootstraps. The phrase is usually used unironically nowadays, despite the fact that the laws of physics make it impossible for one to actually lift oneself by one’s bootstraps. The phrase was originally ironic, recognizing that such a feat is impossible, but as the myth of the self-made man grew (and it is a myth; no one succeeds in life without help), the phrase became unironic in its application.

First though, what is a bootstrap? It is quite simply a loop at the top back of the boot used to help pull the boot on. This literal meaning goes back the seventeenth century, if not earlier, when it is recorded in George Merton’s 1685 English–Latin dictionary: “Boot strap    Stroppus, m.”

The earliest use of the metaphor underlying the familiar phrase that I know of is from an 1830 physics text by John Lee Comstock, A System of Natural Philosophy:

It was on account of not understanding the principle of action and re-action, that the man undertook to make a fair wind for his pleasure boat, to be used whenever he wished to sail. He fixed an immense bellows in the stern of the boat, not doubting but the wind from it would carry him along. But on making the experiment, he found that his boat wen backwards, instead of forwards. The reason is plain. The reaction of the atmosphere on the stream of wind from bellows, before it reached the sail, moved the boat in a contrary direction. Had the sails received the whole force of the wind from the bellows, the boat would not have moved at all, for then, action and re-action would have been exactly equal, and it would have been like a man’s attempting to raise himself over a fence by the straps of his boots.

Comstock repeats the anecdote in his 1838 Youth’s Book of Natural Philosophy, only this time he uses the phrase as we know it today:

Had this man made, and applied the experiment of attempting to raise himself into the air by pulling at his bootstraps, he would have saved himself the expense of building such a boat.

(The word bootstraps is hyphenated in the printing, but the hyphen is at a line break.)

The phrase appears numerous times in various American newspapers in the latter half of the nineteenth century, all of them acknowledging the fruitlessness of the task.

The earliest apparently unironic use of the metaphor that I know of is from the Eumaeus episode of James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses—although given that it’s Joyce, he may have meant it ironically, too:

However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that.

But a few years later, it is definitively used unironically. This use is also the first known use of the words bootstrapper and bootstrapping. From the 18 September 1927 Times of London:

Now everyone has heard of the American bootlegger. He overs alike an administering angel on the back stairs of every true American home. But the bootstrapper, though less familiar to the foreigner, is an even greater national figure, just as the feat of “lifting oneself by one’s bootstraps” is an almost entirely American accomplishment. Obviously, if you really were born a plumber, and if the unwritten law of the land demands that as a real he-man you must die at least with a white collar round your neck, you have got to do something about it. You do. You lift yourself by your bootstraps.

IT CAN BE DONE

The amazing thing about it is that it can be done—the laws of gravity notwithstanding. An ardent bootstrapper can become not only a successful business man, but a poet, a bestseller, a fashionable portrait painter, and, of course, a politician. I have seen it done.

Bootstrap enters the world of electrical engineering in the 1940s, appearing in a US Army technical manual on radar in April 1944:

Since gain is essential in the operation of this driver, a bootstrap amplifier is used. The bootstrap circuit includes elements which cause the voltage on the grid of the amplifier tube to raise with the cathode voltage, maintaining a constant signal voltage from grid to cathode.

And in the 1950s, the phrase bootstrap technique began to be used in computing to refer to a self-executing program. From a 1953 article by Werner Buchholz on the IBM 701 computer:

Self-Loading Procedure

Another area where the programming facilities of the computer have successfully replaced physical hardware is in the loading of a new program into the computer. There is a load button and a selector switch on the machine, but they do just barely enough to get the process started. The rest is accomplished by a technique sometimes called the “bootstrap technique” The switch determines whether the program is to be loaded from tape, cards, or drum. Pushing the load button then causes one full word to be loaded into a memory address previously set up on the address entry keys on the operator’s panel, after which the program control is directed to that memory address and the computer starts automatically.

By 1980, the verb to boot was in use in computing. From Martha E. Sloan’s 1980 Introduction to Minicomputers & Microcomputers:

Then we must turn on the PDP-11, as we discussed in the last section of Chapter 4. We turn the power knob to ON, and depress the CONTROL and BOOT switches. We call this procedure booting the system.

It is often claimed that lifting oneself up by one’s bootstraps originates with R. E. Raspe’s 1785 novel Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, but neither the phrase nor anything like it appears in that work. However, Gottfried August Bürger, in his 1786 translation of the novel into German, Wunderbare Reisen zu Wasser und Lande, Feldzüge und Lustige Abentheuer des Freyherrn von Münchhausen, adds a tale in which the baron pulls himself and his horse out of a muddy swamp by his own hair. Bürger’s metaphor has the same meaning as the American phrase, but there are no bootstraps involved.

Sources:

Buchholz, Werner. “The System Design of the IBM Type 701 Computer.” Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 41.10, October 1953, 1262–75 at 1273/1–2. Archive.org.

Comstock, John Lee. A System of Natural Philosophy, Hartford: D. F. Robinson, 1830, 40. Archive.org.

———. Youth’s Book of Natural Philosophy, Hartford: Reed and Barber, 1838, 45. Archive.org.

Joyce, James. Ulysses (1922). Hans Walter Gabler, ed. New York: Vintage, 1993, 16.1212–15, 528.

Merton, George. Nomenclatura clericalis, or, the Young Clerk’s Vocabulary in English and Latine. London: Richard Lambert, 1685, 55. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1972, s.v. bootstrap, n.; 1989, s.v. bootstrap, v., and boot, v.4.

Radar System Fundamentals (April 1944). War Department Technical Manual, TM 11-467. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1946, 164. Archive.org.

Sloan, Martha E. Introduction to Minicomputers and Microcomputers. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1980, 158. Archive.org.

Wylie, I. A. R. “The Bootstrapper.” Sunday Times (London), 18 September 1927, 10/4. Gale Primary Sources: Sunday Times Historical Archive.

Image credit: Oskar Herrfurth, before 1934. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.