Abbreviations everyone uses

limited liability company

In a GmbH the owners are liable only with the company's assets, not their private wealth. Founding one requires at least €25,000 in share capital.

💡 Did you know? The GmbH was invented in Germany in 1892 and later copied worldwide.

Universal Serial Bus

„USB“ stands for Universal Serial Bus: a standardised interface for almost all devices.

💡 Did you know? USB replaced many older computer ports.

Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

The name is the whole idea: the diver carries their own air supply instead of a hose to the surface.

💡 Did you know? It was coined for a US Navy device in the 1940s, before the Aqua-Lung made the technique civilian.

Portable Document Format

Adobe released it in 1993 so that a document would look identical on every machine and printer.

💡 Did you know? Since 2008 the format has been an open ISO standard: which is why every operating system can open a PDF without asking Adobe.

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

It is not a word but a sentence: light that is amplified by stimulated emission.

💡 Did you know? The principle goes back to Einstein in 1917; the first working laser was built by Theodore Maiman in 1960.

Nothing

Three dots, three dashes, three dots: unmistakable even through heavy interference.

💡 Did you know? Save Our Souls and Save Our Ship were read into it later. It also has the advantage of sounding the same backwards.

United Nations

Founded in 1945 by 51 states; today it has 193 members.

💡 Did you know? The name was suggested by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 for the wartime alliance, and simply carried over to the peacetime organisation.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

The alliance was founded in 1949 by twelve states on both sides of the Atlantic.

💡 Did you know? Article 5 (an attack on one is an attack on all) has been invoked exactly once in the alliance's history: after 11 September 2001.

General Data Protection Regulation

The EU regulation has applied since May 2018 and governs how personal data may be handled.

💡 Did you know? It is the reason for the consent banners on almost every website and for fines that can reach four per cent of a company's global turnover.

Personal Identification Number

The idea came from the Scottish engineer James Goodfellow, who patented it in 1966.

💡 Did you know? Saying PIN number therefore says number twice (a habit so common it has its own name): RAS syndrome.

Light Emitting Diode

A semiconductor that turns current directly into light, with very little waste heat.

💡 Did you know? Blue LEDs were missing for decades, without them there was no white light. The three researchers who solved it received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014.

carbon dioxide

One carbon atom, two oxygen atoms: the gas released whenever carbon burns.

💡 Did you know? It makes up only about 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere, and that small share is enough to keep the planet roughly 30 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be.

electrocardiogram

It records the electrical activity of the heart through electrodes on the skin.

💡 Did you know? Willem Einthoven built the first usable device around 1900: patients had to put their hands and a foot into buckets of salt water.

Frequently Asked Questions

The list of questions a site answers before anyone has to ask them.

💡 Did you know? The term is older than the web: it comes from mailing lists of the 1980s, where newcomers kept asking the same things.

Répondez s'il vous plaît

The phrase is French and has been standard on invitations since the eighteenth century, when French was the language of European society.

💡 Did you know? It asks for an answer either way: which is why RSVP regrets only exists to say that silence counts as yes.

Ministry of Transport

The ministry introduced the test in 1960; the name outlived the department itself.

💡 Did you know? Cars over three years old must pass it every year; the equivalent test in Germany is run by the TÜV, in the US by state inspections that vary widely.

International Standard Book Number

Every edition has its own number, so paperback and hardback are told apart.

💡 Did you know? The system grew out of a numbering scheme a British bookshop chain devised in 1965 to run its warehouse by computer.

Radio Detection and Ranging

Radio waves are sent out and the echo is timed to give distance and direction.

💡 Did you know? The US Navy coined the acronym in 1940. The word was chosen partly because it reads the same backwards.

Automated Teller Machine

A teller was the bank clerk who paid out cash: the machine took over the job.

💡 Did you know? The first one went into service outside a Barclays branch in London in 1967 and worked with paper vouchers, because plastic cards with magnetic stripes did not yet exist.