Capsaspitators

I had our daughter solder up some circuit boards for me (as part of a clever scheme to get her trained up on circuitry) and we were discussing the projects. I used the term capsaspitator and she gave me a blank look … as well she might, because even Google doesn’t know what they are.

A long time ago, back on the IBM Video Disc project, Mad Phil and HH were chasing the gremlins out of a particularly tricky bit of RF-oid analog / digital circuitry. This task required a prodigious quantity of bypass caps and, at some point, Mad Phil announced that he’d had it up to there with those [obscene gerund] capsaspitators!

The term immediately caught on and I use it to this day in reference to any particularly obscure capacitor, particularly  bypass caps that seem useless and are actually vital.

It’s pronounced caps-ASS-pi-tator, of course, and now everybody can find it on The Web…