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Old October 2nd 05, 07:40 PM
Nostrobino
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"Floyd Davidson" wrote in message
...
"Nostrobino" wrote:
In this case "prime" is clearly used to ditinguish the main lens
from the supplementary lens.


Thanks to both of you. These tend to support my recollection that this
misuse of "prime" first appeared c. 1990, and also that the term was still
in correct use at the same time. I would be very interested to see if
anyone
can produce a substantially earlier example of "prime" being used to mean
fixed focal length.


What difference does that make? As long as you want to claim it
means "the term was still in correct use", you are simply wrong
no matter what.

The "correct" use has evolved.


No, it has not. As shown repeatedly, it is still in current use and means
the same thing it always meant.

Nor is there any obvious way that "fixed focal length" could evolve into
"prime." You might as well expect a horse to evolve into a cabbage.



On the other hand, it you rid yourself of this insistance that
whatever the use was at some specific point in time is "correct"
as opposed to all evolution that happened at a later date being
"incorrect", then yes it is interesting to catalog the
evolutionary process to see when it changed and to compare that
to the external factors that guided that evolutionary process


Go ahead, outline "that evolutionary process" for me. I'd sure like to see
how you get "fixed focal length" to evolve into "prime." What might the
intermediate steps look like, I wonder?

N.