Balling the jack

This is an American slang expression, which most sources claim, dates from the early 20th century, but there is plausible evidence that it not only dates from much earlier, but also that its meaning has changed over time. The meaning today is to go fast or take off at top speed or to do anything in a great hurry. Jack Kerouac, for example, used the expression in his book On The Road (1957) to describe how fast he and his friends took off in an automobile, “No sooner were we out of town than Eddie started to ball that jack ninety miles an hour out of sheer exuberance.” Its original meaning, however, was vastly different. The expression started off as the jargon of US railroad workers drilling with jackhammers. 'Balling the jack' meant rotating the drill at high speed. Some sources maintain that US railroad workers were using this expression as long ago as the mid to late 19th century. The problem is that citations for this earlier usage are difficult to find. Drivers of US trains then picked up the expression, but, so the story goes, 'balling the jack' came to mean driving trains at great speed, hence today's usage, as epitomised by the Kerouac example. The story is then complicated and perhaps compromised by the very fast, lively ragtime tune called 'Ballin’ the Jack' written by Jim Burris and Chris Smith in 1913. The tune became so popular that many sources give this as the origin of the expression, which it is definitely not.. Interestingly, there is a 1969 song from The Grateful Dead, titled Easy Wind, which contains the lyric, "I been balling a shiny black steel jackhammer'. The search continues, however, for a citation from about one hundred years earlier, which, if it can be found, will verify the origin.