On 2/28/21 1:45 PM, Jeffrey Brace wrote:
Kinda like architects using big floor-standing HP ink-jet printers, calling them "plotters", to the point where HP themselves calls them "plotters". They are not plotters; they are ink-jet printers. But they replaced pen/vector plotters, so they kept calling their output devices "plotters".
Thanks for sharing Dave. I love hearing about specific history like this. Especially where terminology gets distorted, muddled and people keep going with incorrect terminology, yet it becomes commonplace enough that every starts to accept it even though incorrect and/or inaccurate.
Yup. The one that gets me is "broadband". That's a completely inaccurate term. It does not mean, and has never meant "fast connection", but that's what people take it to mean now, all over the industry. Broadband is a technical term that has to do with the style of modulation which is applied to a carrier signal in order to transmit information. It has nothing to do with "bandwidth". Most fast connections are in fact "baseband", which is effectively the opposite of "broadband". It is the nature of language to evolve, but when it evolves sloppily by clueless people ("broadband") without intervention from people who know, it turns into a vomitous mess. Big ink-jet printers being called "plotters" never irked me quite as much as "broadband", but it's still wrong, and my terminologically-obsessive brain just goes into involuntary "NO THAT'S WRONG YOU MORON!" seizures when I hear it. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA