Circuit Shorts: The Origin of Tech Names

What is in a tech name? In this Circuit Shorts article, we consider take a look at a few interesting tech terms and name.

We refer to many things through their acronyms. USB is Universal Serial Bus, and PCB is Printed Circuit Board. Spelling out some of those acronyms tells us what they are pretty descriptively. FPGA? Field Programmable — can be programmed outside the “factory” — Gate Array, an array of logic blocks (that are much more complex these days than they were when the term was coined in the mid-1980s). That is: it’s not an ASIC, Application Specific Integrated Circuit. FR-4? Flame Retardant 4. DVD is either Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc, depending on who you ask. And so on.

I assume that most readers would have already known how to expand these acronyms. But what about the “RS” in RS232? Receiver Sender? Remote Serial? Nope. Simply Recommended Standard. RJ-45? Ring Jack 45, which has a nice ring to it. CR2032 coin cell? “C” is for the battery’s composition and “R” for a round shape, that’s 20 mm in diameter and 3.2 mm high. Neat. I²C? Inter-Integrated Circuit — whatever that means — called out as “I-square-C,” “I-two-C,” or “IIC.” Did you know that now there’s an update to I²C called I3C? As far as I can tell, it’s not an acronym, just I(2+1)C, and its marketing name is SenseWire. You might have seen TWI, Two Wire Interface. Well, that’s just what companies who didn’t implement the full spec, or those who want to avoid the I²C trademark, call I²C. (The trademark expired in 2015.)

It gets more interesting. PIC was a rather dry Peripheral Interface Controller, but then upgraded to Programmable Intelligent Computer, no less. AVR never stood for anything officially and neither did Wi-Fi until companies started imagining it actually stood for Wireless Fidelity in their marketing materials. Bluetooth is named after a Nordic king’s rotten tooth, while Ethernet is named after the elusive luminiferous aether. And, Arduino is simply named after an Italian bar.

Looking at company names is fun too. N.M. Electronics was too boring, so they replaced it with INTegrated Electronics — Intel — but needed to buy the name from a hotel chain. ARM was Acorn RISC Machine and then Advanced RISC Machines and then just ARM. Atmel was an acronym for Advanced Technology for MEmory and Logic. But my favorite is 3M, which expanded to Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing!

Circuit Shorts Pop Quiz

It is lots of fun looking into the origin of the names we use on an almost daily basis. All the names in this article are real, except for one. What other interesting origin stories do you know?