[AT] Names that have become generic

[Larry D. Goss]

Names get changed in all fields for similar reasons, Brian, simply
because somebody in authority starts pushing it down our throats and it
becomes politically correct for us to follow suit.

You're too young to remember when every company had an employment
office.  Now, it has to be called Human Resources.  Payroll became
compensation. Insurance became benefits.  The list goes on.  The
condenser/capacitor thing goes back to the beginning of the 20th century
at least.

I happened to be in on the ground floor when the whole computer industry
got politically correct wording.  I was working with a committee (aka
task force) on our campus to determine the direction of computing for
the "foreseeable future".  The university (remember when most of them
were called colleges?) hired a consultant (enabler, mole) from IBM to
guide us toward a grand decision concerning hardware and software for
the mainframe computer.  He told us we had to come up with a name that
encompassed all the functions we had identified for the central
computer.  We worked on it for several days and came up with some fairly
good names (descriptors) for what we were doing.  The consultant found
that all of our suggestions fell short of the mark and insisted that we
call it "Information Technology."  Our reaction was, "What the #$%^^&
does THAT mean?"  No one knew.  As it turned out, MIS-types already had
such a bad reputation for mis-managing data processing by the mid-80's
that several companies (led by IBM) and a couple of professional
organizations decided the name had to be changed to overcome the
problems that were developing nation-wide.  So a brand new term joined
the lexicon.  To no one's surprise, the university also determined that
IBM had the best hardware and software for what we needed.

There was a comment a day or so ago either on this thread or another
about the guy who identified a Ford as a John Deere.  For some, all
tractors are John Deere's.  That's one of the generic names we're
talking about.

Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Brian
VanDragt
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 8:34 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Names that have become generic

Larry,
You're right, I wasn't born until after the early 70's.  I had no idea
that
all capacitors used to be called condensers.  Why would they change a
perfectly good name for something to something else?  Now my original
question has been answered and I have learned something.

Thanks,
Brian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry D. Goss"


> The problem is some of you guys are just too danged young.  You think
>that because you learned a particular name for a device when you were
in
>school it must have always been named that.

> I only have to go back to the early 70's to find literature that
> officially calls those things "condensers."  And THAT happens to be on
> some tractor literature.

> Larry

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