Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

kluge
     
         /klooj/, /kluhj/ (From German "klug" /kloog/ - clever
        and Scottish "{kludge}") 1. A Rube Goldberg (or Heath
        Robinson) device, whether in {hardware} or {software}.
     
        The spelling "kluge" (as opposed to "kludge") was used in
        connection with computers as far back as the mid-1950s and, at
        that time, was used exclusively of *hardware* kluges.
     
        2.  A clever programming trick intended to solve
        a particular nasty case in an expedient, if not clear, manner.
        Often used to repair bugs.  Often involves {ad-hockery} and
        verges on being a {crock}.  In fact, the TMRC Dictionary
        defined "kludge" as "a crock that works".
     
        3. Something that works for the wrong reason.
     
        4. ({WPI}) A {feature} that is implemented in a {rude} manner.
     
        In 1947, the "New York Folklore Quarterly" reported a classic
        shaggy-dog story "Murgatroyd the Kluge Maker" then current in
        the Armed Forces, in which a "kluge" was a complex and
        puzzling artifact with a trivial function.  Other sources
        report that "kluge" was common Navy slang in the WWII era for
        any piece of electronics that worked well on shore but
        consistently failed at sea.
     
        However, there is reason to believe this slang use may be a
        decade older.  Several respondents have connected it to the
        brand name of a device called a "Kluge paper feeder" dating
        back at least to 1935, an adjunct to mechanical printing
        presses.  The Kluge feeder was designed before small, cheap
        electric motors and control electronics; it relied on a
        fiendishly complex assortment of cams, belts, and linkages to
        both power and synchronise all its operations from one motive
        driveshaft.  It was accordingly tempermental, subject to
        frequent breakdowns, and devilishly difficult to repair - but
        oh, so clever!  One traditional folk etymology of "klugen"
        makes it the name of a design engineer; in fact, "Kluge" is a
        surname in German, and the designer of the Kluge feeder may
        well have been the man behind this myth.
     
        {TMRC} and the MIT hacker culture of the early 1960s seems to
        have developed in a milieu that remembered and still used some
        WWII military slang (see also {foobar}).  It seems likely that
        "kluge" came to MIT via alumni of the many military
        electronics projects run in Cambridge during the war (many in
        MIT's venerable Building 20, which housed {TMRC} until the
        building was demolished in 1999).
     
        [{Jargon File}]
     
        (2002-10-02)