Old Home Chickens!
Huh?
I'd known that a certain style of equipment knobs were called Chicken Head Knobs [Photo 1] for a few years at least, but when I saw that certain capacitors were called Tropical Fish [Photo 2], I just had to start this page. Of course, the obvious question is: are there any other “alternative” names in the electronics field that share this whimsy? So far all I've come up with are doorknob capacitors (these are extremely high voltage types, some rated at 50 kV) [Photo 3], and pizza boxes [Photo 4] which many Sun workstations were called...any others? ...Anybody?
I eventually came up with sandblock resistors and top hat diodes. See the last two photos.
Photo 1.
Perhaps you can see why these are called Chicken Head Knobs?
Photo 2.
Very colourful, just like a fish called Nemo. It has been reported
to me that they have also been called “Chicklets”.
Photo 3.
If you see one of these in a circuit, best not to poke around with
your fingers!
Photo 4.
Some pepperoni with your graphics? Two pizza boxes, front and back.
Photo from Wikimedia [1].
Photo 5.
Sandblock resistors. You probably could use them to sand some wood,
especially that reddish brown 75Ω one, middle top.
Photo 6.
Tophat diodes. Especially these black ones which are the right colour as well. These 1N1492s may be replaced with type 1N4005 which is a 600 V 1 A rectifier.
[1] “SPARCstation20 front and rear” by Caroline Ford - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SPARCstation20_front_and_rear.jpg#mediaviewer/File:SPARCstation20_front_and_rear.jpg