Thomas Pynchon > “Is it Okay to be a Luddite?”

But the Oxford English Dictionary has an interesting tale to tell. In
1779, in a village somewhere in Leicestershire, one Ned Lud broke into a
house and “in a fit of insane rage” destroyed two machines used for
knitting hosiery. Word got around. Soon, whenever a stocking- frame was
found sabotaged – this had been going on, sez the Encyclopedia
Britannica, since about 1710 – folks would respond with the catch phrase
“Lud must have been here.” By the time his name was taken up by the
frame-breakers of 1812, historical Ned Lud was well absorbed into the
more or less sarcastic nickname “King (or Captain) Ludd,” and was now
all mystery, resonance and dark fun: a more-than-human presence, out in
the night, roaming the hosiery districts of England, possessed by a
single comic shtick – every time he spots a stocking-frame he goes crazy
and proceeds to trash it.