What is the origin of foo and bar

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Where did they come from and when were they first used

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Take a look at the history of  foobar  on Wikipedia

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tl dr    Foo  and  bar  as metasyntactic variables were popularised by MIT and DEC  the first references are in work on LISP and PDP-1 and Project MAC from 1964 onwards   Many of these people were in MIT s Tech Model Railroad Club  where we find the first documented use of  foo  in tech circles in 1959  and a variant in 1958    Both  foo  and  bar   and even  baz   were well known in popular culture  especially from Smokey Stover and Pogo comics  which will have been read by many TMRC members  Also  it seems likely the military FUBAR contributed to their popularity      The use of lone  foo  as a nonsense word is pretty well documented in popular culture in the early 20th century  as is the military FUBAR   Some background reading   FOLDOC FOLDOC Jargon File Jargon File Wikipedia RFC3092     OK  so let s find some references   STOP PRESS  After posting this answer  I discovered this perfect article about  foo  in the Friday 14th January 1938 edition of The Tech   MIT s oldest and largest newspaper  amp  the first newspaper published on the web    Volume LVII  No  57  Price Three Cents      On Foo-ism      The Lounger thinks that this business of Foo-ism has been carried too far by its misguided proponents  and does hereby and forthwith take his stand against its abuse    It may be that there s no foo like an old foo  and we re it  but anyway  a foo and his money are some party   Voice from the bleachers-  Don t be foo-lish         As an expletive  of course   foo   has a definite and probably irreplaceable position in our language  although we fear that the excessive use to which it is currently subjected may well result in its falling into an early  and  alas  a dark  oblivion  We say alas because proper use of the word may result in such happy incidents as the following       It was an 8 50 Thermodynamics lecture by Professor Slater in Room 6-120  The professor  having covered the front side of the blackboard  set the handle that operates the lift mechanism  turning meanwhile to the class to continue his discussion  The front board slowly  majestically  lifted itself  revealing the board behind it  and on that board  writ large  the symbols that spelled  FOO     The Tech newspaper  a year earlier  the Letter to the Editor  September 1937      By the time  the  train  has  reached  the station  the  neophytes  are  so  filled with  the  stories  of  the  glory  of  Phi Omicron  Omicron   usually  referred  to as  Foo   that  they  are  easy  prey                It  is  not  that  I  mind  having  lost my  first  four  sons  to  the  Grand  and Universal  Brotherhood  of  Phi  Omicron  Omicron   but  I  do  wish  that  my fifth  son   my  baby   should  at least  be warned  in  advance       Hopefully  yours       Indignant  Mother  of  Five    And The Tech in December 1938      General  trend  of  thought  might  be best  interpreted  from  the  remarks   made  at  the  end  of  the  ballots   One vote  said     I don t  think  what  I  do  is any  of  Pulver s  business    while another  merely  added  a  curt   Foo       The first documented  foo  in tech circles is probably 1959 s Dictionary of the TMRC Language      FOO   the sacred syllable  FOO MANI PADME HUM   to be spoken only when under inspiration to commune with the Deity  Our first obligation is to keep the Foo Counters turning    These are explained at FOLDOC  The dictionary s compiler Pete Samson said in 2005      Use of this word at TMRC antedates my coming there  A foo counter could simply have randomly flashing lights  or could be a real counter with an obscure input    And from 1996 s Jargon File 4 0 0      Earlier versions of this lexicon derived  baz  as a Stanford corruption of bar  However  Pete Samson  compiler of the TMRC lexicon  reports it was already current when he joined TMRC in 1958  He says  It came from  Pogo   Albert the Alligator  when vexed or outraged  would shout  Bazz Fazz   or  Rowrbazzle   The club layout was said to model the  mythical  New England counties of Rowrfolk and Bassex  Rowrbazzle mingled with  Norfolk Suffolk Middlesex Essex      A year before the TMRC dictionary  1958 s MIT Voo Doo Gazette   Humor suplement of the MIT Deans  office    PDF  mentions Foocom  in  The Laws of Murphy and Finagle  by John Banzhaf  an electrical engineering student       Further research under a joint Foocom and Anarcom grant expanded the law to be all embracing and universally applicable  If anything can go wrong  it will    Also 1964 s MIT Voo Doo  PDF  references the TMRC usage      Yes  I want to be an instant success and snow customers  Send me a degree in                Foo Counters   Foo Jung        Let s find  foo    bar  and  foobar  published in code examples   So  Jargon File 4 4 7 says of  foobar       Probably originally propagated through DECsystem manuals by Digital Equipment Corporation  DEC  in 1960s and early 1970s  confirmed sightings there go back to 1972    The first published reference I can find is from February 1964  but written in June 1963  The Programming Language LISP  its Operation and Applications by Information International  Inc   with many authors  but including Timothy P  Hart and Michael Levin      Thus  since  FOO  is a name for itself   COMITRIN  will treat both  FOO  and   FOO   in exactly the same way    Also includes other metasyntactic variables such as  FOO CROCK GLITCH   POOT TOOR   ON YOU   SNAP CRACKLE POP   X Y Z  I expect this is much the same as this next reference of  foo  from MIT s Project MAC in January 1964 s AIM-064  or LISP Exercises by Timothy P  Hart and Michael Levin      car   FOO   CROCK    GLITCH     It shares many other metasyntactic variables like  CHI   BOSTON NEW YORK   SPINACH BUTTER STEAK   FOO CROCK GLITCH   POOT TOOP   TOOT TOOT   ISTHISATRIVIALEXCERCISE   PLOOP FLOT TOP   SNAP CRACKLE POP   ONE TWO THREE   PLANE SUB THRESHER  For both  foo  and  bar  together  the earliest reference I could find is from MIT s Project MAC in June 1966 s AIM-098  or PDP-6 LISP by none other than Peter Samson      EXPLODE  like PRIN1  inserts slashes  so  EXPLODE  QUOTE FOO  BAR   PRIN1 s as  F O O       B A R  or PRINC s as  F O O     B A R       Some more recallations    Walter Mitty recalled on this site in 2008      I second the jargon file regarding Foo Bar  I can trace it back at least to 1963  and PDP-1 serial number 2  which was on the second floor of Building 26 at MIT  Foo and Foo Bar were used there  and after 1964 at the PDP-6 room at project MAC    John V  Everett recalls in 1996      When I joined DEC in 1966  foobar was already being commonly used as a throw-away file name  I believe fubar became foobar because the PDP-6 supported six character names  although I always assumed the term migrated to DEC from MIT  There were many MIT types at DEC in those days  some of whom had worked with the 7090 7094 CTSS  Since the 709x was also a 36 bit machine  foobar may have been used as a common file name there       Foo and bar were also commonly used as file extensions  Since the text editors of the day operated on an input file and produced an output file  it was common to edit from a  foo file to a  bar file  and back again       It was also common to use foo to fill a buffer when editing with TECO  The text string to exactly fill one disk block was IFOO HXA127GA    Almost all of the PDP-6 10 programmers I worked with used this same command string     Daniel P  B  Smith in 1998      Dick Gruen had a device in his dorm room  the usual assemblage of B-battery  resistors  capacitors  and NE-2 neon tubes  which he called a  foo counter    This would have been circa 1964 or so     Robert Schuldenfrei in 1996      The use of FOO and BAR as example variable names goes back at least to 1964 and the IBM 7070   This too may be older  but that is where I first saw it   This was in Assembler   What would be the FORTRAN integer equivalent  IFOO and IBAR    Paul M  Wexelblat in 1992      The earliest PDP-1 Assembler used two characters for symbols  18 bit machine  programmers always left a few words as patch space to fix problems   Jump to patch space  do new code  jump back   That space conventionally was named  FU  which stood for Fxxx Up  the place where you fixed Fxxx Ups   When spoken  it was known as FU space  Later Assemblers   e g  MIDAS allowed three char tags so FU became FOO  and as ALL PDP-1 programmers will tell you that was FOO space     Bruce B  Reynolds in 1996      On the IBM side of FOO FU BAR is the use of the BAR side as Base Address Register  in the middle 1970 s CICS programmers had to worry out the various xxxBARs   I think one of those was FRACTBAR       Here s a straight IBM  BAR  from 1955     Other early references    1967 foo bar MIT AIM-127 1967 foo bar MIT AIM-127a  1965 foo MIT Tech Engineering News 1968 foo baz DEC 1971 FOO BAR UCLA-NMC RFC269 1972 FOO MIT AI 1972 FOO MIT AI HAKMEM  PDF scan   1972 FOO DEC 1973 FOO DEC 1973 foo bar International Joint Council on Artificial Intelligence  1975 foo bar International Joint Council on Artificial Intelligence  1977 Foobar  1978 Foobar  1978 Moby Foobar in Software Wars     I haven t been able to find any references to foo bar as  inverted foo signal  as suggested in RFC3092 and elsewhere   Here are a some of even earlier F00s but I think they re coincidences false positives    1959  FOO 31 IBM-704 Bettis Plant Uses a least squares technique  U S  Atomic Energy Commission 1960 FOO  FO Out  F1  F2  FOO  FOI   Digital computer and control engineering  1967 FOO

[history] What is the origin of foo and bar?

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