why do they call it rebooting the computer when kicking is not involved?

Answer 1

When I was starting out in computing science in the 1970's, with PDP-11-03 minicomputers, 32k total memory, we did have to kick them to reboot them. They often wouldn't do anything, otherwise. The manager didn't like it, but there were so many partially broken circuits on the boards that some actual, physical shaking was necessary to get the machines to operate.

Actually, that's not the reason it's called rebooting. It's from "bootstrapping" or "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps". The idea is that the machine restarts itself from scratch, as a person would by "pulling himself up by his own bootstraps".

Answer 2

It's taken from the old term "bootstrapping", meaning to lift oneself up by the bootstraps, a loop of material sewed to the top of boots to help get them on.

When a computer is turned on, a small program called a bootstrapper is used to initiate loading of the larger operating system. The term was reduced to "booting". It's similar to using the small piece of strapping on a boot to pull on the much larger boot.

Answer 3

Have ever been doing a work on computer, and it got frozed up?
Do you know how angry it feels when your 1-2 hour work is lost, and it is not just text-copying but some creative process involved (like design, or programming)?

There we go....

Answer 4

Booting is called "booting" because in the old day the process was called "bootstrapping". It requires the execution of a program called bootstrap loader for a computer initialize itself.

And according to Wiki,

"The name bootstrap loader comes from the image of one pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting

Answer 5

The PDP-11-03 computers had to be "Kick-Started", like some models of Harley-Davidson's. =)

Answer 6

I don't know, kicking should be involved!
-Duo

Answer 7

More than you ever wanted to know, I bet!