The Origin and Purpose of 'Molly Guard' Safety Covers in Computing

Old-school computing has the term 'molly guard': it's the little plastic safety cover you have to move out of the way before you press some button of significance.

Anecdotally, this was named after Molly, an engineer's daughter who was invited to a datacenter and promptly pressed a big red button, as one would.

Then she did it again later the same day.

And some vestigial forms of molly guards exist everywhere in civilian hardware, too: from recessed buttons.