I found the piece donna posted on the use of master/slave interesting, I think it highlighted my objections even more to people trying to turn the term into some sort of conspiracy to commit racism. In the article, it says that the term seems to first appear, in 1864, when slavery was still legal, which has the implication that the term was therefore based in the slavery of the term. The problem with that is that 1864 represents a time period when the building of mechanical things was exploding, to where there might be a device that has functions that are based in the master/slave concept, so it could also be that before this time, there simply wasn’t the kind of machinery that would use it. And yes, it came into more common usage after WWII, but that doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why, that is when computer technology exploded, the information machine age, where that kind of processing is very very common.
And I’ll also tell you as a gearhead (now retired), that I have looked at shop manuals for cars from Japan, Germany, Italy and England, and they all use the master/slave language for the clutch and brake system, so it isn’t like it was simply created here, and I would bet if you went back to writings from England in the 19th century and Germany describing technology of the time, you would find references to it, too.