On Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:19:05 +0000 (UTC), "Geoffrey S. Mendelson"
wrote:

On another list, populated by people with good guessing skills, poor memories
and so on, the question of where did the RG numbers come from?

The most popular answer told with the most auhtority is that RG stands
for "Radio Guide", as a device, the predecessor to wave guides.

I was under the impression, and may have read from a better source that it
does indeed stand for Radio Guide, but that was a tile of a book.

Is that the case, are we all wrong?

If it is from the title of a book, does anyone have a link to, or can send
me a (scanned?) copy of it?

The current consensus is that it means "Radio Guide" and that it was a
big heavy printed book called "Army-Navy List of Preferred Cables" as
part of MIL-HDBK-216. The problem is that nobody I can find has ever
seen such a book or offered a scanned image of at least one page.
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1433989/rg11-compression-connector-installation#post_22497621
Note that the book was dated in the early 1960's. I believe coax
cable was in use with the RG designation long before 1960. Methinks
the whole thing is rubbish.

2nd best is "Radio Grade", which simply means that it's suitable for
use on a radio. That begs the question why it would be necessary to
even have such a designation, making that rather improbable.

My guess(tm) is that it's someone's initials or a combination of the
last names of the draftsmen that were charged with documenting the
cables. Coax cable was invented at AT&T by Lloyd Espenschied and
Herman Affel in about 1928 or 1929, a patent issued in 1931, and
commercialized in 1941. My guess(tm) is that the RG designation
appeared somewhat after commercialization and sales to the military
during WWII.

Original coax cable patent.
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=1835031




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Jeff Liebermann
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