[ARC5] 3-48 binding head sizes in SCR-274-N :-)

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

I (having on occasion been called worse than "obsessive 
nomenclaturologist") have sometimes wondered about that as well.  Aside from simple typos or 
misprints, and cases later where nomenclature butchery was the rule rather 
than the exception (especially among the draft dodging civilians in the late 
40's who most likely did it deliberately), from roughly January 1943 on 
everything that I have of an official nature shows the second hyphen.  But there 
are examples prior to that where it was consistently omitted.  So my theory 
(totally without supporting documents) is that when the nomenclature was 
officially assigned by the Signal Corps in probably 1940 the "N" was an integral 
part of the sequence number and meant Navy, where the set was adopted from. 
 I.e., had there ever been a system revision warranting a revision letter 
being added, the revised set would have been SCR-274N-A.  Then the AN system 
(which does not have the second hyphen) came along.  And some Signal Corps 
staffer issued an instruction in 1942 to start inserting the second hyphen so 
that no one would be in doubt as to which system the nomenclature belonged 
to.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

In a message dated 09/30/2012 18:46:11 PM Central Daylight Time, 
kk5f at earthlink.net writes: 
> But more to a point of esoteric transcendentalism and the pathways to
> enlightenment and ahimsa...why is it so common to leave off the second 
> dash
> in "SCR-274-N"?  "SCR-274N" is not "one with everything".  Obsessive
> nomenclaturologists (yea...I know...not a real word) need to know!  :-)

Robert Downs - Houston
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