Why "Press Brake" and not "Brake Press"

You might use a brake press if you wanted to press some part of a brake system.

Ian S C

Post Office Telecommunications used to have a "rate book" that listed all the items you could get from their stores. Convention was that the noun appeared first in the description followed by an adjective if applicable. I was initially puzzled why everyone in the lab called a terminal block a "block terminal" but it was a result of this strange paractice. Presumably after a few more years someone would rename it a terminal block as by common usage the roles of noun and adjective had reversed.

As for a "mounting core dust", guess what that was?

In a similar vein you stop off the end of a pipe or gutter with a stopend, rather than an end stop, which is what I would ask for at the plumbers merchants before I was 'educated'.

Yes, David McNiven is bang on the mark. This was in the days, remember, of typed lists and no possibility of a search function.

Screw, machine, BSF, high tensile, 1/4" x 1"

Some non military (and non-post-office) parts lists are the same.

Cheers, Tim

I guess a man might be employed to break up old machines used for making brake parts.

So the brake press brake breaker breaks brake press brakes.

Edited By Bazyle on 28/01/2017 17:59:34

Produced using a manually maintained card index, later a card tabulator, and lots of clerical staff. Computers make easy meat of the problem but it used to be a big problem.

In the office most items were managed by part number with not too much concern about what the 'thingy' actually was. When it comes to stock management, factors like cost, size, weight and shelf-life etc are far more important than what it is. In the real world though, people wanting a 'thingy' needed some way of finding out what the part number was so they could order one. The search is much simplified by adopting a nomenclature.

In the military the approach became pervasive. For example, the Catalogue of Naval Stores used to be BR320, where BR stands for BOOK, REFERENCE

Dave