Max's 'patch cords' term was borrowed from analog modular synthesizers, where modules were physically interconnected by such cables

The node-and-wire vocabulary of Miller Puckette's Max (begun as "The Patcher" in 1985 at IRCAM) did not originate with the software. Its central term — patch cords, the on-screen connections that route data between objects — is an inheritance from an earlier physical practice. Per IEEE Spectrum, "the term patch cords came by way of the earlier age of analog modular synthesizers where oscillators, filters, and other modules were physically interconnected by such cables." The screen connection is a digital rendering of a cable a musician would once have plugged between synthesizer modules by hand.

This matters for how Max's dataflow visual-programming model is remembered. The "patcher" metaphor is often cited as a case of independent convergence onto node-and-wire dataflow. But on the Max side the metaphor was not invented from first principles — it was imported from a wiring convention already native to electronic music. That reframing is the load-bearing evidence for the LabVIEW/Max pole of observation-parker-and-labview-max-are-opposite-poles-of-multiple-discovery, which argues the pair's "independence" is over-remembered: each tool digitized a field-native cabling practice rather than converging from nowhere. Max is also named after Max Mathews, tying it to the Bell Labs computer-music lineage. Whether the LabVIEW/Max convergence was genuinely independent remains open at question-verify-labview-max-dataflow-convergence-independence.