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Nice historical nugget from wikipedia on dithering: > Etymology > …[O]ne of the earliest [applications] of dither came in World War II. Airplane bombers us

Nice historical nugget from wikipedia on dithering: > Etymology > …[O]ne of the earliest [applications] of dither came in World War II. Airplane bombers used mechanical computers to perform navigation and bomb trajectory calculations. Curiously, these computers (boxes filled with hundreds of gears and cogs) performed more accurately when flying on board the aircraft, and less well on ground. Engineers realized that the vibration from the aircraft reduced the error from sticky moving parts. Instead of moving in short jerks, they moved more continuously. Small vibrating motors were built into the computers, and their vibration was called dither from the Middle English verb "didderen," meaning "to tremble." Today, when you tap a mechanical meter to increase its accuracy, you are applying dither, and modern dictionaries define dither as a highly nervous, confused, or agitated state. In minute quantities, dither successfully makes a digitization system a little more analog in the good sense of the word.

genewitch 3y ago
I don't buy that etymology, even in the expanded context. It seems like a dutch pronunciation of titter/teeter, and an amalgamation of a few words that became really popular and "cool". I might dig out my norse etymology dictionary and a magnifying glass and try to trace it back further. -- From Etymonline: Teeter: 1843, "to seesaw," alteration of Middle English titter "move unsteadily," probably from a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse titra "to shake, shiver, totter, tremble," from Proto-Germanic *ti-tra- (source also of German zittern "to tremble"). Meaning "move unsteadily, be on the edge of imbalance" is from 1844. [...]Noun teeter-totter "see-saw" is attested from 1871 (earlier simply teeter, 1855, and titter-totter in same sense is from *1520s*). Totter (n.) "board swing" is recorded from late 14c.;
- bruce343434 3y ago
  Dutch people are notorious for having issues with the th sound, which does not occur in the Dutch language and requires practice. They also don't "soften" leading consonants, they "harden" trailing consonants like zand pronounced zant. Thus I don't see why your explanation would be likely. Source: am Dutch, would never pronounce titter as dither even with a bad accent. More likely the other way around actually.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Gordonjcp 3y ago
  "Dither" has been a word for "to move uncertainly" in Scots for several hundred years at least, so I think you might be wrong there.
MayeulC 3y ago
Dithering ils also used in signal acquisition: adding some (known) noise before the sensor can help the signal reach the sensor's threshold. It can also help with quantization noise. Of course, that degrades the signal/noise ratio, but the SNR can be improved later by filtering out the spectral density of the noise, averaging multiple captures, making use of CRC, etc.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
"Dithering Heights" was the name of the ColorSync team's lab at Apple in the 1990's. Conference rooms and lab rooms often had amusing names — as I am sure is true at other companies besides Apple. "Rock" and "Hard Place" were two neighboring conference rooms. Another floor as I recall had conference rooms named with oxymorons, "Military Intelligence", "Jumbo Shrimp" and — was it "Lawrence Expressway"? — something funny to Bay Area residents anyway.
- philsnow 3y ago
  On Lawrence Expressway, the carpool lanes are the rightmost lanes. It makes about as much sense as it sounds like.

genewitch 3y ago

I don't buy that etymology, even in the expanded context. It seems like a dutch pronunciation of titter/teeter, and an amalgamation of a few words that became really popular and "cool". I might dig out my norse etymology dictionary and a magnifying glass and try to trace it back further. -- From Etymonline: Teeter: 1843, "to seesaw," alteration of Middle English titter "move unsteadily," probably from a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse titra "to shake, shiver, totter, tremble," from Proto-Germanic *ti-tra- (source also of German zittern "to tremble"). Meaning "move unsteadily, be on the edge of imbalance" is from 1844. [...]Noun teeter-totter "see-saw" is attested from 1871 (earlier simply teeter, 1855, and titter-totter in same sense is from *1520s*). Totter (n.) "board swing" is recorded from late 14c.;

bruce343434 3y ago
Dutch people are notorious for having issues with the th sound, which does not occur in the Dutch language and requires practice. They also don't "soften" leading consonants, they "harden" trailing consonants like zand pronounced zant. Thus I don't see why your explanation would be likely. Source: am Dutch, would never pronounce titter as dither even with a bad accent. More likely the other way around actually.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Gordonjcp 3y ago
"Dither" has been a word for "to move uncertainly" in Scots for several hundred years at least, so I think you might be wrong there.

MayeulC 3y ago

Dithering ils also used in signal acquisition: adding some (known) noise before the sensor can help the signal reach the sensor's threshold. It can also help with quantization noise. Of course, that degrades the signal/noise ratio, but the SNR can be improved later by filtering out the spectral density of the noise, averaging multiple captures, making use of CRC, etc.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

"Dithering Heights" was the name of the ColorSync team's lab at Apple in the 1990's. Conference rooms and lab rooms often had amusing names — as I am sure is true at other companies besides Apple. "Rock" and "Hard Place" were two neighboring conference rooms. Another floor as I recall had conference rooms named with oxymorons, "Military Intelligence", "Jumbo Shrimp" and — was it "Lawrence Expressway"? — something funny to Bay Area residents anyway.

philsnow 3y ago
On Lawrence Expressway, the carpool lanes are the rightmost lanes. It makes about as much sense as it sounds like.