Origin
The terms tip and ring originated in the early days of telephony, when human telephone operators used phone plugs to connect customer calls. The names of the wires are derived from the part of the plug to which they are connected. The words are often abbreviated as T and R in wiring diagrams. While the ring is connected to −48 volts, the tip is connected to ground for safety. This is because when the telephone operator is handling the plug, the tip is more likely to touch something other than intended.
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Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)