[ARC5] "Bowden" cables.

[Richard Knoppow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kenneth G. Gordon" <kgordon2006 at frontier.com>
To: <ARC5 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 11:35 AM
Subject: [ARC5] "Bowden" cables.


>I believe that the original spelling for that was 
>"Bowduin". I believe it is
> French.
>
> This is probably another example of my being "a walking 
> encyclopedia of
> useless information"... as one of my highschool teachers 
> called me...
>
> Kenneth G. Gordon W7EKB

     Or Bowdoin or something else.  There is an article on 
the thing at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowden_cable
     Turns out to be pretty common, used on bicycles and as 
cable releases for camera shutters.
     According to this article the name comes from the 
inventor but he was British so who knows how the name was 
originally spelled.  English tends to adopt all sorts of 
foreign words and names often changed a bit to make them 
easier to get an English speaker's tongue around.  Then 
there are the mis-spellings, either accidental or 
deliberate, for instance the military use of _bristo_ for 
Bristol and _aline_ for align, the latter, I think, some 
sort of attempt at simplified spelling for ill educated 
people.  I am not drawing a blank (someone here will know) 
on the fellow who promoted simplified English, particularly 
getting rid of ough, for example thru for through. I still 
see this occasionally and it always makes me cringe.  Of 
course, ough was something that disappeared in British 
spelling but was brought back about the time of the American 
Revolution.  Same with color/colour and similar words.  Not 
much of this has anything to do with military radios but I 
suspect people who are interested in them and their history 
are also interested in a lot of other stuff.


--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk at ix.netcom.com