Chad refers to fragments sometimes created when holes are made in a paper, card or similar synthetic materials, such as computer

punched tape Five- and eight-hole punched paper tape Paper tape reader on the Harwell computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle – creating a physical program loop Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage ...

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...

s. The word "chad" has been used both as a

mass noun In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, non-count noun, uncount noun, or just uncountable, is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete elemen ...

(as in "a pile of chad") and as a

countable noun In linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun that can be modified by a quantity and that occurs in both singular and plural forms, and that can co-occur with quantificational determiners like ''every'', ''each'', ''several'', et ...

(pluralizing as in "many chads").

Etymology

The origin of the term chad is uncertain. Patent documents from the 1930s and 1940s show the word "chad", often in reference to punched tape used in

telegraphy Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

. These patents sometimes include synonyms such as "

chaff Chaff (; ) is the dry, scaly protective casing of the seeds of cereal grains or similar fine, dry, scaly plant material (such as scaly parts of flowers or finely chopped straw). Chaff is indigestible by humans, but livestock can eat it. In agri ...

" and "

chip Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a type of immunoprecipitation experimental technique used to investigate the interaction between proteins and DNA in the cell. It aims to determine whether specific proteins are associated with specific genom ...

s". A patent filing in 1930 included a "receptacle or ''

chad box In computing jargon, the bit bucket (or byte bucket) is where lost computerized data has gone, by any means; any data which does not end up where it is supposed to, being lost in transmission, a computer crash, or the like, is said to have g ...

'' ... to receive the chips cut from the edge of the tape." A 1938 patent filing included a "chaff or ''chad chute''" to collect the waste fragments. Both patents were assigned to

Teletype Corporation The Teletype Corporation, a part of American Telephone and Telegraph Company's Western Electric manufacturing arm since 1930, came into being in 1928 when the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company changed its name to the name of its trademark equipment. ...

. The plural ''chads'' is attested from about 1939, along with ''chadless'', meaning "without

oose Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of pr ...

chad". Clear definitions for both terms are offered by Walter Bacon in a patent application filed in 1940 assigned to

Bell Telephone Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

: "... In making these perforations, the perforator cuts small round pieces of paper, known in the art as ''chads'', out of the tape. These ''chads'' are objectionable ... ''Chadless'' tape is prepared by feeding blank tape through a device which will not punch a complete circle in the tape but, instead, will only cut approximately three-quarters of the circumference of a circle ... thereby leaving a movable, or hinged, lid of paper in the tape." In the '' New Hacker's Dictionary'', two unattributed and likely humorous derivations for "chad" are offered, a

back-formation In etymology, back-formation is the process or result of creating a new word via inflection, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes associated with the ...

from a personal name "Chadless" and an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for "Card Hole Aggregate Debris". Other etymologies claim derivation from the Scottish name for river gravel, ''chad'', or the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

slang for

louse Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a resul ...

, ''chat''.

Partially punched chad

When a chad is not fully detached, it is described by various terms corresponding to the level of modification from the unpunched state. The distinctions are of importance in counting cards used in voting. The following terms generally apply when describing a four-cornered chad: *Hanging chads are attached to the ballot at only one corner. *Swinging to the ballot at two corners. *Tri-chads are attached to the ballot at three corners. *Pregnant or dimpled chads are attached to the ballot at all four corners, but bear an indentation indicating the voter may have intended to mark the ballot. (Sometimes "pregnant" is used to indicate a greater mark than "dimpled")

2000 United States presidential election controversy

In the

2000 United States presidential election The 2000 United States presidential election was the 54th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 2000. Republican candidate George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and eldest son of the 41st president, George H. W. Bush ...

, many Florida votes used Votomatic-style punched card ballots where incompletely punched holes resulted in partially punched chads: either a "hanging chad", where one or more corners were still attached, or a "fat chad" or "pregnant chad", where all corners were still attached, but an indentation appears to have been made. These votes were not counted by the tabulating machines. The aftermath of the controversy (see '' Bush v. Gore'') caused the rapid discontinuance of punch card ballots in the United States.

References

External links

{{commons category, Chads
Snopes – Origin of 'Chad'

on chad
BBC News
on chad

Papercutting Art
Punched card 2000 United States presidential election in Florida 2000 United States presidential election Election technology Vote counting Ballots

Etymology

Partially punched chad

2000 United States presidential election controversy

See also

References

External links