By David LebowitzWire crimp plug connectors are sometimes referred to as ‘wire crimps’, but they actually have two very different purposes.
The first is to connect wire to metal, and wire to ground.
The second is to attach wires to metal components, and metal components to electrical components.
A wire crimper is usually a connector that fits into a slot in a metal device, such as a battery or a power transformer.
It can be used to attach electrical wires to metals such as batteries, transformers, and other electrical components, as well as to conduct electrical energy to the metal component.
The term wire crimping was coined by Charles L. Swart, a crimp specialist at Swart & Mittleman in San Francisco, California.
Swarts first coined the term wire-to-metal, or wire-on-metal crimping, because the wires he was using were metal.
When a wire is inserted into a metal surface, it is called a metal wire.
A metal wire is much heavier than a wire crimped to a copper wire.
Because a metal-on, metal-off crimp is much easier to use than a metal crimped-to copper wire, the term ‘wire-on’ is used to describe a wire-type crimp.
Swarts original description of wire-style crimp used on copper wire was that it is a metal on metal crimp: It looks like a wire.
Swartz’s description of a wire as a metal ‘wire’ didn’t fit well with the terminology he was used to.
So he coined the word wire-ons and ‘wire -ons’.
The first known use of wire crimpers was by Louis B. Johnson, the founder of the American Wire Co. Johnson used wire-sorters to connect the wires of a radio to the wire terminals of a telephone.
In this way, he could wire the telephone to a receiver and then wire the receiver to a telephone receiver.
Wire-sorter crimps are very common today in many commercial electronics and power tools.
For more on wire crimbing, check out:How Wire Crimps Work