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Show "That Prefix 'Super' Has Suffered Rare Punishment Punish-ment Since Radio Came " By J. II. MORECROFT, Institute of Radio Engineers Was there ever an art which called forth aa many unpromunceable nd unintelligible names as has radio? This failing for coining names, sometimes simple and sometimes complex, for tubes and circuits originated originat-ed at a certain laboratory in Schenectady about 12 years ago, according to our recollection. These Greco-Schenectady names, as Dr. De Forest aptly characterized them at the time, were not as bad as they first sounded, sound-ed, because they were at least coined by men who knew some philology. The names of sets and circuits which descend today on a startled world surpass one's powers of pronunciation and analysis alike. One firm kindly kind-ly condescends to translate its name into ordinary English for us, so we at least know what the names are intended to convey, but many others remain outside our vocabulary, and in despair we have decided not to attempt at-tempt to keep up longer with the word coiners. That prefix "super" has suffered rare punishment since radio came into its stride overworked so much that nowadays unless a set is super something or other no one pays any attention to it. And the situation has its serious side, as well as comic; many times lately we have been asked by enthusiastic newcomers in the radio field about the relative merits of the super-diddle-daddle and the super-daddle-diddle and have had to confess that we didn't even know what they were. Wherewith our reputation has straightway fallen to less than nothing t "He knows the theory," say our inquirers, "but he doesn't know how it is applied." Won't the word coiners take a few days off? |
