USA terms vs UK terms.

[Kentode]

Hi, l don't post on this particular part of the forum as I'm a self-taught amateur and I'm not yet ready to work with eht, but this fell out of a rather tatty RCA Receiving Manual and I thought you might find it interesting.

If anyone wants the original, and/or the book, let me know and I'll send it to you for the postage.

[kalee20]

It's always puzzled me where the term 'gimmick capacitor' came from. All the others are plausible!

[simpsons]

I wonder when Philips first used gimmick capacitors in their radios?

"You know the ones," a wire insulated by a ceramic tube with an uninsulated wire wrapped around it to create a fixed capacitor with a very long service life.

Twisted insulated wires? Covered before, no pun intended, in this Forum and used by Philco, also an RCA competitor, which is possibly why RCA deemed them to be just "gimmicks."

Chris

[red16v]

Originally Posted by simpsons

I wonder when Philips first used gimmick capacitors in their radios?

"You know the ones," a wire insulated by a ceramic tube with an uninsulated wire wrapped around it to create a fixed capacitor with a very long service life.

Twisted insulated wires? Covered before, no pun intended, in this Forum and used by Philco, also an RCA competitor, which is possibly why RCA deemed them to be just "gimmicks."

Chris

Never knew they were called 'gimmicks', but Quantel's very high tech flip/rotate/zoom all over the place picture manipulators in the early 80's used these in their PAL decoders. Spent many an hour tweaking and twisting these insulated paired/twisted wires for minimum smoke on the decoded outputs and this was absolutely state of the art kit at the time.

Apropos not much else, I used to go out with a young lady from West End, Southampton.

[Craig Sawyers]

I used them in a video processing I designed back in the early 80's. There was a video bandwidth IC (like a TO5 can, but bigger). To get the rise time as fast as possible without overshoot I ended up with a gimmick. Kept cutting it shorter until it measured just right.

Tektronix did something similar in the 7A19 500MHz plugin, except it was inductors. Short loops of wire that you kept squeezing together (to reduce the loop area and inductance) to optimise rise time and reduce aberrations.

Craig

[Graham G3ZVT]

There's a Laurel and Hardy film where the hapless duo are on a roof erecting an...
...aerial.
The other "A" word is not mentioned.

Not long ago on the forum, someone posting from outside the UK (not N America) referred to a "picture valve" meaning a CRT, but presumably trying to avoid using the word "tube" as they perceived it to be the wrong word for the UK.

(Customers would often say "It's only the picture valve" as wishful thinking about what they considered was a quick and cheap fix. They were not referring to the CRT).

[its ur aerial]

(Customers would often say "It's only the picture valve" as wishful thinking about what they considered was a quick and cheap fix. They were not referring to the CRT).

Years ago when working amongst the Irish community in NW London, they always referred to lack of raster on their telly as, " I tink dat dere fillum valve", has gone, and the volume control as the "higher and der lowerer".
The happy days of being out in the field
Ken, G6HZG.

[radio69]

Ah yes, Kilburn; a grand place as was. I lived near there with an Irish girl for a while, but that's another story for another day...

I used to have an aunt; long since brown-bread - who was a bit daffy; who used to refer to 'the sound valve' and 'the picture valve'
"TV's on the blink again, the picture comes and goes - it must be the picture valve again, he only changed it last month..."

I remember my mum once telling me; one particular tv engineer was trying to 'pull' her; he kept coming back to her flat to check her picture valve.....

Was he successful, I enquired...No!!! she said, in no uncertain terms !!

[joebog1]

ha ha ha ha Excellent Ken, but I think you been watchin too much Spike on da telly.

Joe

[McMurdo]

Anyone watching the highly entertaining californian youtube engineer Shango066 will soon pick up any USA TV tech lingo if they didn't know it already and a bit of lingo that I suspect he makes up on the spot just to confuse the foreigners.

Glasslinger's youtube channel is relatively free of the spurious tongue-twisters if you don't mind the intermittent cat interventions and the soft texan accent. He fixes alot of 20's and 30's radios so apart from 'tube' and 'bee plus' it's mostly the same as the UK.

Radiotvphononut's channel leans more towards radios and vintage record players (he did a nice HMV portable a while back) if you manage to decode the strong Mississippi dialect and slightly soft focus video.

For me, talking to folks across the pond, it's the everyday british words and phrases that seem to elicit an 'excuse me?' For example once I was talking about 'a bit of this' or 'just a bit' or similar and the person over there thought I'd launched into a spurious conversation about binary computer data.

[dtvmcdonald]

'a bit of this' or 'just a bit'

are perfectly normal American, as is "just a tad" or "teensy bit" or "teensy weensy bit"
or rather were in my day long ago .. maybe they are not Gen Z, which may actually be the problem.

I've finally gotten used to "perfect" in Gen Z-ese

[joebog1]

is "just a tad " or teensy bit " similar to "jive a**ed m****r****er " the same ?.
MODERN american speek is truly horrible, and I swear like the proverbial trooper!! just listen to Uchoob !!

I have the odd person in USA that communicates with me, but generally they speak English, although NONE of them can spell.

That is not important though, as its the spirit of our hobby/trade that is important.

Joe in straya

[Welsh Anorak]

Maybe someone can explain why solder is pronounced 'sodder' across the pond?

[Cobaltblue]

I did a quick google and found this:

https://www.circuitspecialists.com/b...t-so-silent-l/

Cheers

Mike T

[kalee20]

The list left off USA's 'aluminum' (following the naming convention of tantalum, molybdenum) and UK's 'aluminium' (which follows the magnesium, sodium convention).

[Richard_FM]

I remember asking my cousin's then girlfriend who had grown up in the USA to say "I keep my herbs in an aluminium vase at my leisure", which she had to very slowly!

[wireman]

Terms in other fields that are pronounced differently (despite what some websites will tell you in the case of the first one):

router (computing)
Buoy (noun)

[wireman]

Originally Posted by kalee20

The list left off USA's 'aluminum' (following the naming convention of tantalum, molybdenum) and UK's 'aluminium' (which follows the magnesium, sodium convention).

I used to get irked by this but it is really based on a history of indecision.

[Mr Hoover]

Originally Posted by kalee20

The list left off USA's 'aluminum' (following the naming convention of tantalum, molybdenum) and UK's 'aluminium' (which follows the magnesium, sodium convention).

I believe it was called aluminium in the USA till the 1920's,can't recall why it changed.

[Radio Wrangler]

Sodder

David