[turretslug]

It's an interesting historical hangover that has a certain charm- as said, probably from the earliest TRF days. I think there was a tendency to increment the complexity of a home-made set in the early days as savings and confidence increased, possibly the original TRF detector diode/non-linearly biased triode etc. would then get used as a mixer in some embryonic superhets, thus becoming "1st detector" and the term stuck? Perhaps "detector" could be elaborated as "vital non-linearity stage making the signal usable by the next stage", whether that next stage be high-impedance headphones, AF or IF amp. Latterly coming under the cover-all generic "modulator"- even if it demodulates!