Word of the Day
25 July 2026
terminator
An electrical device that absorbs reflection at the end of a transmission line.
Why this one
It works by matching the line's impedance so energy arriving at the end has nowhere to bounce back to. Miss one on a long RS-485 or coax run and the fault looks like noise or bad data rather than a missing part.
In use
Comms kept dropping out on the far RTU until we found nobody had fitted a terminator at the end of the bus.
Written by our editors to show how the term is used, not a recorded quotation.Sources
- Definition sourceWiktionary