Names in Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio

The origins of names of things in Amateur Radio has a long and internet riddled history, with hear-say and false memories added.

The humble BNC connector was patented in 1951. BNC doesn't stand for Baby N-Connector, Bayonet N-connector, British Naval Connector, Berry Nice Connector, Berkeley Neucleonics Corporation or any such name. Apparently, it's named after it's inventors Paul Neill and Carl Concelman, the Bayonet Neill-Concelman connector. They went on to invent the Threaded Neill-Concelman connector, the TNC. A sub-miniature version of these connectors came in three types, A, B and C, called SMA, SMB and SMC.

Also, the N-type connector was invented by the very same Paul Neill at Bell Labs, and the C connector came from Carl.

The Yagi antenna, was invented in 1926 by Shintaro Uda in collaboration with Hidetsugu Yagi, both of Tohoku Imperial University in Japan. It's actually called an Yagi-Uda antenna. Yagi described the antenna in English in 1928 and his name became associated with the antenna.

The PL-259 and SO-239 connectors are not so clear-cut. The PL for plug and SO for socket seems to be agreed on. There are several explanations on the numbers, but the most persistent one seems to be that it was a US army part number. They're also referred to as UHF connectors and if you know that they were invented in the 1930s, you'll understand that UHF frequencies started at 30MHz and "above", which in practical terms meant 300MHz. An interesting thing to note is that a standard banana plug mates properly with an SO239, so you can just plug your long-wire straight into the socket.

Of course we have the Volt, the Ohm, the Ampere and the Farad, named after Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, German physicist Georg Simon Ohm, French physicist and mathematician André-Marie Ampère and English physicist Michael Faraday.

Everything is named after something. Sometimes we even remember what that was and where it came from.

What things have you learned about names in Amateur Radio?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB