What caused the shift from calling things like rheostats and condensers to resistors and capacitors, or the move from cycles to Hertz?
It seemed to just pop up out of nowhere, seeing as the previous terms seemed fine, and are in use for some things today (like rheostat brakes, or condenser microphones).
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“Resistor” usually implies a device with a fixed resistance value. A rheostat is a device with variable resistance. The two terms are not synonymous.
As for condenser and capacitor, Wikipedia has an interesting tidbit:
Early capacitors were known as condensers, a term that is still occasionally used today, particularly in high power applications, such as automotive systems. The term was first used for this purpose by Alessandro Volta in 1782, with reference to the device’s ability to store a higher density of electric charge than was possible with an isolated conductor. The term became deprecated because of the ambiguous meaning of steam condenser, with capacitor becoming the recommended term in the UK from 1926, while the change occurred considerably later in the United States.
That’s funny, in Swedish we say “kondensator”, in effect, condenser.
Exactly the same in Polish (same spelling).
Same in French, “condensateur”
On dit aussi beaucoup une capacité ou simplement une capa Pas sur si c’est un angliscisme ou une norme qui évolué
We also say capacité, or simply capa, I am not sure whether it’s borrowed from English, or whether the official terminology evolved
In german too, but “Kapazitor” is usus too.
edit: though googling it, Wikipedia says “Kondensator(Elektrotechnik)”
So, that’s where Finnish borrowed that word… like so many other words too. Perhaps calling it borrowing isn’t entirely fair, since this thing has been going on for so long and it’s been really extensive. Sort of like the way the British Museum “borrowed” a significant part of their collection from somewhere else.
Perhaps calling it borrowing isn’t entirely fair,
I know, over here we would call that robbery at knife point ;)
Or viking style pillage and plunder accompanied by burning the monastery and stabbing the priest.
In Spain we say “condensador”
Yes, it’s condenser too
I’m going to take a first stab at some parts of the question.
Regarding rheostat vs resistor, I don’t think one term replaces the other. In modern terminology, a rheostat refers to a two-lead device that varies in resistance. Whereas a resistor implies a fixed resistance. Rheostat brakes would make sense, since a fixed amount of braking current would be… unusual. “Variable resistance brakes” would mean the same, but is longer.
For cycles vs Hertz, I’ve not personally come across a technical reference which only listed “cycles”. Rather, old radios often list “cycles per second” when documenting the intermediate frequency, for example. So compared to writing “cycles per second” or “cps” over and over, Hertz is much shorter and easily abbreviates as Hz (eg MHz, kHz).
For condenser vs capacitor, I honestly haven’t any idea. I’m also keen to see some other answers to this question.
It’s most likely as our understanding of the systems and the underlying physics have changed, so have the terminologies.
There was also the push for international standardisation of units. This probably helped push terms inline with the original discoverers terms, or were “rebranded” to honour the original/significant discoverers (or for politics or whatever).Some terms will still be used due to legacy, because it’s not worth trying to change it, or because the application is more inline with the original discovery.
The more modern terms probably refer to an improved design or different application of the same principle.
Eg a rheostat only has 2 terminals and works as a plain variable resistor, often built to handle higher power scenarios. A potentiometer uses 3 terminals and is often built for lower power scenarios.While capacitor and condenser are the same thing, capacitor is likely more popular as it relates to it’s SI unit. And it’s SI unit describes what it does, It has capacity to store charge.
Things like valves Vs tubes. Tube describes what it is: a high vacuum tube. A valve describes what it does: varies the electricity flowing through it.
However, not all valves are vacuum tubes, some can be gas filled. And not all vacuum tubes are valves, for example television tubes.A lot of this comes from multiple people developing similar things based on similar premises and applications, however all being slightly different. At the end of the day, the underlying physics is immutable, just the implementation and application changes.
And there was little-to-no communication between them, so people close to each discoverers would have used their implementation.
Sorta like Apple OSX Vs Windows. They are both desktop environment computers. But they do it in different ways to achieve the same result.
And then, all of these really useful technologies became standardised (or a clear “winner” emerged), and the terminology also became standardised.
All of which results in terms dropping out of favourIn Portuguese, and I imagine in other Latin languages too, capacitors are still condensadores. But many English terms are taking over native names.
that was me sorry about that
