Why are they called breadboards?

Question

Why are solderless protoboards called "breadboards"? I've used the term for decades but couldn't answer a student's question about the name.

Answer 1

This terminology goes waaaaay back to the days of vacuum tubes.
Generally, you would mount a number of tube-sockets on standoffs to a piece of wood (the actual "breadboard"), and do all the wiring with point-point wire and the components just hanging between the various devices.
If you needed additional connection points, you would use a solder-lug terminal strip.

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The story goes that an engineer had an idea for a vacuum tube device late one night. Looking around the house, the only base for his prototype that he found was indeed his wife's breadboard, from the breadbox.

Now, I'm not endorsing actually using a real breadboard. It's your marital strife if you do.

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I've actually constructed a tube project using the breadboard technique. It works very well.

Answer 2

Back in the day, circuits were often constructed by wire-wrapping components onto nails driven into flat pieces of wood that resembled (or were?) breadboards.

There's a nice video demo by the Make Magazine people here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HrG98HJ3Z6w

Answer 3

In the early days of electonics, engineers would drive nails into breadboards (literally the boards that bread is cut on) and then solder on the components.

See wikipedia's page