"chad" 1944

[Gerald Cohen]

    On Jan.13 I sent an ADS-L message with a 1944 attestation of
"chad."   Douglas Wilson then responded:

>Good show! I reviewed that volume of AIEE Trans. today, and it's about the
>same in the original journal form. Note that there's no explanation of the
>meaning of "chad", suggesting that the term was already familiar in the
>industry at the time -- but there are quotation marks! There seem to be no
>useful references. Similar material was published in 1943 (IIRC) but it
>didn't include that part.

     I am particularly interested in the last sentence just above.
Would D. Wilson be able to provide the exact bibliographical
reference(s). If the 1943 discussions about perforation contained no
mention of "chad," this might indicate that the authors of the 1944
article were the ones who officially introduced "chad" into
telegraphy parlance. They were not only distinguished engineers but
important administrators at Western Union, and their article was no
doubt read by many of the telegraphers there.

     My interpretation of the quotation marks is that the term "chad"
was not yet a part of standard telegraphy parlance. In my work on the
origin of the term "shyster" (two monographs) I noticed that the
1840s editor who first used this term put it in quotes--but only in
the first article.  Afterwards it appeared without quotation marks.
He did the same with one other term, although I no longer remember
which one. The point is that quotation marks around a term can
indicate that a slang/dialectal term is being introduced into
standard writing for the first time.

     The two Western Union engineers, d'Humy and Howe, may therefore
deserve credit for introducing "chad" into telegraphy parlance (and
thence into other technical fields).  This is only a hypothesis, of
course. There's a 1940 book on telegraphy I'm trying to get ahold of
(available only in Carlisle,PA, non-lending), and it would be good to
learn more about d'Humy and Howe. But if we hit bedrock with their
1944 article, then these two engineers represent the official
starting point of the term in the U.S. And they almost certainly
would have learned the term from British colleagues familiar with
English dialectal "chat" or "chad" (=heaps of small objects). Maybe
one or the other was British himself.

---Gerald Cohen

>
>Date:         Sat, 13 Jan 2001 21:27:50 -0500
>From: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>Subject:      Re: "chad"--1944 attestation
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>>     The earliest attestation thus far for "chad" is 1947 (from the
>>files of Merriam-Webster). Here now is one from a few years earlier:
>>
>>_American Telegraphy After 100 Years_, by F. E. d'Humy,
>>Vice-President and Chief Engineer, and P.J. Howe, Assistant Chief
>>Engineer in Charge of Engineering Economics, The Western Union
>>Telegraph Company. Published in Supplement to the "Transactions of
>>the A.I.E.E.," volume 63, 1944, pages 1014-1032. Later reprinted
>>separately. --(A.I.E.E. = American Institute of Electrical Engineers).
>>
>>      The copy I obtained is the reprinted one. Page 16, col. 3 says:
>>
>>        'One of the equipment differences between the Western Union
>>and Postal Telegraph switching systems is that the printer-perforator
>>used in the latter is essentially a "typing reperforator," which uses
>>a narrow tape and prints the characters right over the code
>>perforations.  In order to obtain readability,the holes in the tape
>>are punched only part way,eliminating the "chad" and thus providing a
>>complete surface to receive printing, although still leaving the
>>holes free for entrance of the transmitter pins.'
>
>Good show! I reviewed that volume of AIEE Trans. today, and it's about the
>same in the original journal form. Note that there's no explanation of the
>meaning of "chad", suggesting that the term was already familiar in the
>industry at the time -- but there are quotation marks! There seem to be no
>useful references. Similar material was published in 1943 (IIRC) but it
>didn't include that part.
>
>The technology was remarkably stable way back. Paper tape (Wheatstone tape
>[with chads!]) was virtually unchanged from ca. 1860 to the late 1920's,
>apparently, and the subsequent tapes weren't all that different.
>
>>... which headed me in the right direction of radiotelegraphy.
>
>But it doesn't need to be "radio-": wired telegraphy used the same sort of
>tape. The subject indices in AIEE Trans. and elsewhere tend to list this
>sort of thing under "telegraph", "telegraphy", "telegraph equipment",
>"teletype" (back to about 1930), etc. If anyone has some other good terms
>to look for in the indices, please let me know.
>
>-- Doug Wilson