/e-lə-ˌvā-tər kən-ˈtrō-lər/
n. Another archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like toaster (which superseded it). During one period (1983-84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a really stupid, memory-limited computation environment.
"You can't require 'printf(3)' to be part of the default runtime library -- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?"
Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of several holy wars.