Talk:Boffin

message: Article Boffins listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion Apr 26 to May 3 2004, consensus was to delete.  Discussion:
*Dicdef of slang. -- Ben Brockert 22:43, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)
*List for cleanup, but am inclined to keep.  With its WWII origins, and its obscurity to many in the USA, it's a word that a good article could be written about, and what's there is a start. Smerdis of Tlön 00:33, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Um, don't you mean consensus was to keep but move to singular noun? Also, do we really need Boffin (disambiguation) rather than a link straight through to Boffin (hobbit family)? I'm rather inclined to give the user one less link to follow myself. - IMSoP 16:00, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Listed for deletion in 2004

message: Why does this article link to BAF? --AdamBackstrom (talk) 15:43, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Er. . . uh. . . because it can?  Smerdis of Tlön 15:57, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. --AdamBackstrom (talk) 21:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: See Also

message: It is difficult to follow what this part of the article is saying. It seems to suggest that the word 'boffin' became less a compliment and more of a joke during the 1950s/1970s, because Britain's scientists were less capable than their American counterparts.
This does not seem to me to be true, and there is no justification given for this statement at all. In fact, Britain was matching the US during the 1950s, and while it was economically overtaken during the 1960s, projects like Concorde showed that British 'boffins' could still deliver. However, more importantly, I can see no proof whatsoever that the word has lost its meaning of expertise and become primarily funny.
While the word boffin is often used in a jocular context - the eccentric aspect being of relevence here - this is certainly not the primary meaning of the term in Britain. If it were, the term would not be used commercially to indicate expertise. Yet a simple google shows many British companies using the term in a positive and non-humourous context -  http://www.offshoreboffin.com/ and http://www.boffin.com/ are two examples. Compare these with Google hits for American companies using the word 'nerd'. Most other UK google hits show that the word is almost a direct one-to-one synonym with 'scientist' or 'engineer'. Eccentric scientists exist, of course, and are a Hollywood stock-in-trade, but this one-sided portrayal does not show that the boffin is always mad - one might equally claim that the film 'The Nutty Professor' shows that American 'professors' are denigrated because of perceived failings with the Space Shuttle!
Typical examples of current British 'boffins' include Colin Pillinger, lead scientist on the Mars Beagle project, and Ron Ayers, aerodynamics engineer for the current supersonic land speed record holder, Thrust SSC. 
This whole section seems to be a typical example of US-centerism, based on TV portrayals. My understanding of the word is that it does carry the 'other-worldly' eccentricity image which the word 'professor' often carries - it can be denigrated by anti-intellectuals in the same way as the word 'professor' can be, but there is no implication that a 'boffin' is a joke because Britain's scientists are a joke. Americans may meet the word only through film/tv (where all the examples seem to come from), and so may have a distorted view? 86.10.119.90 (talk) 17:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The mystique of the boffin 

message: There appears to have been some massive amounts of vandalism, because the article currently only consists of 'Scott.'  For some reason, I keep get an error when trying to revert.  Any other edits care to fix this?  Preferably ASAP. 66.191.19.68 (talk) 20:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Successfully reverted to last (presumably) good version. Griswald (talk) 22:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for handling it. 66.191.19.68 (talk) 23:33, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Massive vandalism. 

message: I have made many changes to etymology. Would any actual boffins care to review? I've ended up moving much of the material to 'usage'.
My edits have been informed by the following 'appreciation', for whjich I do not (yet) have full references and which may need a separate article:
Before coming to power Churchill had consorted with scientists and mathematicians (e.g Einstein) and had advocated 'the appliance of science' to warfare. On coming to power he saw Britain's position as hopeless unless it could develop new science, notably in decision-making (including cryptography, planning, analysis), radiomagnetic devices and atomic physics. 'Boffin' seems to refer to 10cm pulsed radar, with the work conducted collaboratively with TRE in the lead. The word may have been first used in connection with anti-submarine trials rather disparagingly, but was rapidly adopted with more positive connotations. (Demo against small ships by TRE Autumn 1940.ADM 220/78, CSS to DSD (personal) 29 March 1941, re E.A. Landale of Signal School "Landale and his party have done a wonderful job in taking over from the Research Department (TRE) in Decmber, engineering and improving the technical performance of the equipment, and getting it to sea and working by mid-March." Quoted in H.D. Howse, Radar at Sea, The Royal Navy in World War 2 (Macmillan, 1993).)
Usage seems to have shifted post about 1973, and I have yet to make complete sense of the public sources.
I have these detailed Queries:
# Added reference to Sarah Biffen/Biffin and copied some of the material below to the main page. I wonder if some have confused 'artistic' and 'autistic'?.
# When Watson-Watt disparaged 'Colonel Boffin' was he aware of the Army's positive usage? Or was it an unfortunate coincidence?
# Were there early children's books featuring boffins or Colonel Boffin'?
# When did the US adopt the word, and what did they mean by it? (After Turing's visit, perhaps?)
# When did Farnborough adopt the term? Was Whittle referred to as a boffin? Barnes-Wallis? ...
# When did Turing and others at Bletchley begin to be called 'boffins'? Was it because of their association with Malvern's computer boffins, or codebreaking?
Also, according to https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-invention-scotch-tape-led-revolution-how-companies-managed-employees-180972437/ 
" Through Drew, McKnight came to understand that letting researchers experiment freely could lead to innovation. He developed a policy known as the 15 percent rule, which allows engineers to spend 15 percent of their work hours on passion projects.
“Encourage experimental doodling,” McKnight said. “If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need.”
The 15 percent rule has deeply influenced Silicon Valley culture—Google and Hewlett Packard are among the companies that give their employees free time to experiment. The Scotch tape story is now a classic business school lesson, a parable of the value of instinct and serendipity, which Drew once called, "the gift of finding something valuable in something not even sought out."
My question: was this ever formalised in British practice (e.g., at Malvern), when did it die out, and how did it affect the Boffin's rise and demise?
--Djmarsay (talk) 17:29, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: UK

message: When did the term get applied to mathematicians and Comp. Scientists, such as Turing? (I know it did, but why and when?)--Djmarsay (talk) 15:22, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Usage

message: Whether or not this might be of any use to the article, it seems worth bringing up. "Boffin" seems to have acquired a use, at least in the mainstream British press in the last few years, as a term for any kind of scientist, researcher, or academic - wartime or not. The Register, Daily Times and The Star being perhaps the most prominent examples of this. The original Oxford Dictionary definition seemed to imply it was mostly used to refer to wartime scientists or scientists otherwise working on projects related to the war effort. It just drives me nuts how they seem to throw around this term to refer to ANY academic working on ANY project in ANY country, when words like scientist (or physicist, astronomer, geologist, etc) are not only more descriptive and understandable for most people, they are also more accurate! Today the Register had one about NASA "boffins" developing new technological ideas for exploring Titan. It just seems to imply that ALL of science is some kind of "war effort"... which seems to say something about society. Anyway, I know this isn't a forum or soapbox, but I think it is interesting that in the coming years we will probably see the term be used much more broadly than was true historically. Alt lys er svunnet hen (talk) 21:07, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The Register has a particular writing style. (one of the reasons I like it) and uses the word for humour alongside the copious double entendres in the sub headlines. It's yet to be 'mainstream'. Other British press are likely to be using "boffin" in a slightly jocular way rather than with any particular comment on society. GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:21, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent use of the word