In article om, "Henry
Kolesnik" writes:

I've measured several on two different capacitor meters and all read close
to what the factory told me. I wonder why they coded the values with
numbers that don't make any sense? Military intellligence?

No, Hank, having a new number set to anything is the result of every
manufacturer assigning THEIR own arbitrary number or letter ID to
their products. The military and the government is stuck with a
TOTAL variety of spare parts that can boggle the mind...and does
sometimes tax the efforts of those responsible for maintaining the
logistics of vital parts of EVERYTHING for our government's needs.

I've been up to my elbows in Mil Specs quite enough in the past
half century and just accept it as part of the environment. If you
consult those Mil Specs long enough, you will see that there IS an
order on ID, nomenclature, and so forth. Not only that, but aside
from COTS stocks, a tantalum cap built to a certain Mil Spec will
be the same value, size, rating, and shape from another
manufacturer. Same with resistors, inductors, etc., etc., etc.

Try that with more than one commercial component manufacturer
especially when there's a production run going on and the parts
supply is lagging and the parts from another manufacturer don't
fit. Deep trouble time. Or one manufacturer may add on some
suffix letters or numbers to a so-called "standard" part because
they make an "improved line" of products and the purchasing
department doesn't adjust to this other manufacture's IDs...

The center for Military Intelligence schooling and operations is at
Fort Huachuca, AZ. They have a website with interesting stuff on
M.I. history in it.

Len Anderson
retired (from regular hours) electronic engineer person