At 9:54 AM +0530 19/7/05, Philip Tellis wrote:

Sometime on Jul 18, RB cobbled together some glyphs to say:

...

as baloon transformer and router (from route) pronounced as rao-ter.

I don't know about the baloon, I'd never heard of it before now.

Balun is a portmanteau word, something like (no, it's exactly like) modem. While the latter modulate and demodulate analogue and digital, baluns balance and unbalance impedances.

As far as I know (cos that's the way I've heard it pronounced) it is bal (as in Bal Gandharva) 'un (as in unilateral, but without the yoo sound).