Bnc

BNC most commonly refers to the BNC connector, a type of RF coaxial connector with a bayonet-style locking mechanism. It was developed in the 1950s by Paul Neill and Carl Concelman and is designed for quick, secure connections in radio frequency systems. The BNC family comes in 50-ohm and 75-ohm variants and is compatible with common coaxial cables such as RG-58 and RG-59. It is widely used on test equipment, laboratory instruments, broadcast gear, radio equipment, and older video gear, particularly for baseband video and moderate-frequency applications.

Design and performance characteristics include a two-piece construction and a bayonet coupling mechanism that uses two small lugs to align and lock the mating connector with a twist. Electrical performance is suitable for many applications up to several hundred megahertz in standard versions, with higher-grade or specialized variants capable of higher frequencies. The connector is favored for its simple, tool-free hookup and relatively compact form factor, though it has largely given way to newer interfaces in some high-frequency or compact designs.

In addition to the connector, BNC also stands for the British National Corpus, a large collection of contemporary British English used for linguistic research. The corpus comprises written and spoken material and is employed in corpus linguistics, lexicography, and language education to study usage, frequency, and variation in language.

Other uses or entities may also abbreviate BNC, but the two meanings above are the most common in technical and linguistic contexts.