The Electronic Connector Book - online appendix

Some interconnects share characteristics of multiple classes. Classifying them has been challenging. To name just a few:

• Lever splices:
  • Are they terminal blocks? They use wire cages, and some handle two or more circuits.
  • Are they wire splices? They are used to join wires and are not mounted.
• Pluggable terminal block:
  • Are they rectangular connectors? The two pieces mate just like a rectangular connector.
  • Are they terminal blocks? They look like PCB terminal blocks.
• Phono (RCA) connectors:
  • Are they coax connectors? They have a center conductor surrounded by a shield. But so do coax barrel power couplers, and they are not considered coax connectors.
  • Are they Concentric connectors? They are radially symmetric, just as coax barrel power couplers and phone connectors.

I decided to classify the interconnect with the second option listed in each of the above examples.

While writing this book, I have been constantly challenged by the absence of industry-standard names for specific interconnects.

The most significant hurdle was finding an adjective for the mate that fits in a shrouded connector. I asked mechanical engineers ("boss" and "pocket"), general engineers (the carpentry terms "mortise" and "tenon"), and my girlfriend ("shrouded" and "fitting"). I checked Molex ("cap" and "receptacle"; but also "receptacle" and "plug") and a German manufacturer ("female housing" and "male housing"). I made some weak attempts ("wrap" and "jut"; "innie" and "outie"). Ultimately, online user themadhippy posted "guzinta, something that goes into" on an EEVBlog thread. He made that word up as a joke. But I looked up and found that, in 1945, poet Ogden Nash coined "enshrouded" to mean "goes into". It is now used when teaching divisions ("two gazinta six three times"). What the heck! I adopted it in the pre-release version of this book to describe the mate that "goes into" a shrouded connector. In the end, I went with the dull "enshrouded" because a) the term already exists and b) it does convey the proper meaning.

The industry can be quite inconsistent when naming interconnects:

• Some have the "wrong" name: a modular connector is not modular.
• Some are called by the name of a manufacturer, even though many companies make them and that manufacturer also makes many other interconnects: JST for low-profile wire-to-board connectors.
• Some are called by the name of a manufacturer that does not make them: "DuPont" for shroudless wire-to-board plugs.
• Some have too many names. E.g., a quick-connect may be called fast-on, fast-in, spade, and tab.
• Some have no name. E.g., mass-terminated ribbon cable wire-to-board connectors with a 2-row, 0.1-inch pitch; most people call them "IDC", but there are many other IDC families, and not all family members use insulation displacement (headers are soldered, and some plugs are crimped).

I picked or even coined terms to overcome these issues, and I hope you will use them as well.

I was prepubescent when I first heard about male and female connectors. I was deeply embarrassed. Sometime later, I thought those terms were fitting and precise (though maybe slightly sophomoric). Back then, I thought everyone could be classified as either a boy or a girl, and sex and gender were synonymous. We are starting to be aware that sex (physiological) and gender (societal) are distinguished and far more nuanced than we first thought. Similarly, I became aware of the nuances of connector genders only recently. We are still puzzled by coax barrel power plugs, genderless connectors, hermaphrodite vs. self-mating connectors, and shrouded female connectors. Only now, as I write this, I realize that connector gender is incorrect and that we should be saying connector sex instead, as it is determined by its physical characteristics, not by social constructs. The terms male and female are also incorrect because they are just a metonymy for the implied penis and vagina, which express the concept vividly. While you and I are now unfazed by connector gender terminology, people around us may find it uncomfortable or downright insulting. You may use logic to explain that there is nothing inherently sexist about calling a socket female; that the electrical industry adopted these terms from mechanics, which likewise adopted them from biology; that biology adopted vagina from military jargon (in Latin, vagina, pronounced vah-JEE-nah, is the sheath into which a sword is placed); that male and mating do not imply superiority or overpowering. Such arguments are irrelevant to someone who is offended. Considering current societal realities, male, female, and mating may evoke or infer thoughts of machismo, misogyny, and rape, respectively. While these feelings may not be as intense as those evoked by the term master/slave (see below), they are nonetheless worthy of our respect. How? For one, let us not belittle their feelings or "mansplain". While we may look for suitable replacements, we have failed so far. Even if we find and propose suitable replacements, we are unlikely to change this industry given how entrenched these terms are, how comfortable we are using them, and how hard it is to see why anyone should be offended by them. However, these are the same arguments our parents used when told that the far more offensive N-word was inappropriate. We use these arguments today when told that the S-word for Native American women is offensive. Just as we mostly replaced the N-word and are in the process of replacing the S-word, we may one day replace the names we use for connector genders or even connector gender itself.

The above thought also applies to slave when discussing a master/slave topology. I acknowledge that the word may be offensive to the descendants of enslaved people, regardless of its unrelated meaning in the technological context. We have searched for alternative terms that convey the sense of "a device that commands" and "a device that obeys". Of the many suggestions I received, "employer and employee" comes the closest. Until the day that the industry changes to a new pair of terms, please allow me to continue using these terms because they serve us perfectly, and please accept my apology if, by doing so, I offend you.