[Hallicrafters] 70 Year Old Spelling Error

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

On 8/8/05, Rich Oliver <Rich.Oliver at lowell.edu> wrote:
> We had a good one here at Lowell Observatory a couple of years ago.  The
> local paper wrote up a story about our "LONEOS" (Lowell Observatory Near
> Earth Object Survey) Telescope, only in the article it came out as the
> "LOONIES" Telescope.  This had lots of folks puzzled but I knew how it
> happened.  Just run "LONEOS" through your spell checker and see for
> yourself.  Aren't spell checkers grate?

Almost as good as their human counterparts? 

Back in the mid-late 80s I was asked to write a feature article about
amateur radio for a magazine up this way. The editor was doing an
entire edition about radio in the area, commercial to ham. Writing the
article involved interviewing different operators and writing about
their part in amateur radio.

One fellow I interviewed was Bob, WB1AJG. Bob was (maybe still is?) a
net control operator for the Intercontinental (INTERCON) Net on 20
meters. When writing up his piece, I used the abbreviation instead of
the full spelling simply because it was the common vernacular of the
day.

The editor decided I had made a spelling error and, without contacting
me, changed the spelling to INTERCOM before publishing. In her
defense, she hadn't a clue about radio. Needless to say, I got a lot
of questions about why *I* used that word instead of the 'real'
abbreviation. The remainder of the article was fine, but talk about a
glaring (to hams, at least) error.

Software is only as good as the code(r), which is why I use a spell
checker only rarely, when I'm not sure. It's too easy to rely on them
to do the work and then expect them to be correct. Of course, my
typing leaves a lot to be desired on some days, which makes for some
interesting interpretations.

de Todd/'Boomer'  KA1KAQ