What is a Balrog?

   Balrog is a fire spirit, a powerful creature, like a dragon. Unlike dragons, which were Morgoths evil creatures, balrogs where those fire spirits that Morgoth corrupted. In the Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" there is a famous scenary, where wizard Gandalf fights and defeats balrog in the dwarf ex-kingdom of Moria.

Balrog is one of the most impressing creatures found in the 'Rings'. Though it is described as evil, in the third age they were in practice extinct and Gandalf kills with great sacrifices the last of them in Moria. The image above is from Silmarillion which describes times before third age when there were several battles with balrogs of this kind.

The idea giving a name balrog to Our research machine was that of power. To be frank, model 220 isn't nowadays impressive at all but at that time it was something new compared to those old PCs. And it was made by notorius IBM which we knew by the evil PC technology...

The balance the situation, Our new X terminal Galadriel  was named after elf Queen because of it's cute look. And because the IBM and AIX wasn'

t so bad at all. Well, a little odd perhaps, but workable.