Abstract
Is it too late to enter emphatic protest against admitting into English vocabulary such an excruciating hybrid as ‘television’? I am afraid it is, otherwise this term would not have appeared in this journal (July 3, p. 18) as the title of A. R.'s interesting paper, thereby receiving the cachet of NATURE. Hitherto the terminology of science has been framed in scrupulous conformity with the unwritten law or rule against the fusion of different languages in a compound vocable. In this case there is all the less occasion for relaxing the rule because there is ready to hand the term τà δπτıκá, employed by Aristotle to denote all that relates to vision—optics. Surely ‘teleoptics’ would be as convenient a name as the cacophonous ‘television’, and would not upset the equanimity of pedants like myself.
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MAXWELL, H. Television or Teleoptics?. Nature 118, 194 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118194c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118194c0
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