Thanks for all the interesting replies - particularly Len's long
historical narrative - and please accept my apologies for not responding
immediately. The magazine article took a different course from the one
that I'd anticipated, and thus took much longer to write.

After all the research and reminiscence, though, we still aren't much
closer to understanding why some old-time telephone engineer named this
circuit a "hybrid" . We can only speculate that, before finding his true
vocation with Ma Bell, he had failed both English and Genetics.

In the end it seemed more important to concentrate on the defining
characteristics of a modern "RF hybrid", which are coupling between some
of its ports (usually equal power division), and at the same time,
isolation between other ports. Even that is more of a loose consensus
than a firm definition, of course.

Anyhow, the article eventually started with a fairly detailed
description of the telephone hybrid (which also explains why a hybrid
can sometimes be called a bridge instead) and then wandered onward to
identify a few RF hybrids and describe some useful applications of RF
hybrids; by which point, I had used up my two pages.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed - it certainly helped to
straighten out my thinking on what had originally seemed such an
innocent little question.


--

73 from Ian GM3SEK 'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek