More trivia: origin of the wheel group

[Bill Moran]

Gary W. Swearingen wrote:
> Bill Moran <wmoran at potentialtech.com> writes:
> 
>>Does anyone know why the wheel group is called "wheel"?  I mean, why not
>>"admins" or something like that.  "wheel" certainly is a cryptic name for
>>the administrators group.  Anyone have any idea why it's called "wheel"?
> 
> Seems obvious to me.  "Big wheel" was slang for "one who calls the
> shots" or "VIP" as long as I can remember.  And "wheel" was common
> slang for "big wheel".  Some sys admin must have seen sys admins as
> qualifying.  Why "big wheel" had that meaning, I can only guess, but I
> suspect it came from horsey days when people's importance was
> pretty-well correlated with the size of their vehicle's wheels.

Interesting.  I can't remember ever hearing the term "Big wheel" before.
Perhaps it's some local slang that is seldom used in western Pennsylvania?

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com