History
The term negative double was initially employed to distinguish it from the penalty, or business, or positive double, and signified a double over an opponent's opening bid whose meaning was a request for partner to bid his best suit. Around 1930, the term informatory double replaced negative double, and that term later gave way to takeout double as it is used at present; the original term negative double fell into disuse.
In 1957, Alvin Roth in his partnership with Tobias Stone appropriated the abandoned term negative double to denote a conventional double by responder over an overcall and gave it its current meaning. The bid was also briefly known as Sputnik, because it was as new as the satellite of that name that the Soviet Union had recently launched. The term is still used sometimes in Europe.
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