On Feb 13, 6:47�am, Ian White GM3SEK wrote:
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

Heh heh heh, the etymological problems can be furthered
by looking at other terms in all of electronics and how they
came to be known. :-) Sometimes we just have to plain
accept common terms rather than buy industrial-strength
aspirin quantities to ease the ensuing headaches. "English"
(our supposed 'common' language) has, like most other
languages in Yurp, grown, adopted, changed, mangled,
seasoned, and baked thoroughly by common folk for
centuries in daily use. The only "correct" use seems to
be that authorized by our school teachers... :-)

How about posting in here when the publishing schedule
is firm about which issue the article will appear in? [he
said, mangling sentence structure] Might be a fun future
topic for discussion? :-)