origins of "kludge"

[Eric Josephson]

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005, Jim Isbell, W5JAI wrote:

> The French word for "bell" is "cloche" which is pronounced not
> un-similarly to kludge.  Thus, this word was bastardized by the
> Americans and an unwieldy arrangement came to be known as a cloche or
> later as a Kludge.

Interesting.  I'd always assumed it was a corruption of some form
of the German word 'kluge' (clever).