What does EOS mean anyway??

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Sorry to ask you this, but I've been a "EOS" user now for years, and I was NEVER able to find - even in Canon's literature - what the acronyms EOS and EOF - mean. That's killing me, since I am pretty curious about this... THANKS FOR BRINGING ME SOME LIGHT!!!

-- William Juliano (wjuliano@uol.com.br), April 09, 1999

Answers

It means "Eat Our Shorts," Nikon.

-- Dave Jenkins (djphoto@vol.com), April 09, 1999.

Maybe it's NOT an acronym- Eos was the goddess of the dawn in Greek mythology; Canon may have used all upper case letters so as to be able to trademark it. I'm just guessing, you understand. But I don't pronounce it Ee Oh Es, do you?

-- Dave Beekman (beekmand@up.lib.mi.us), April 10, 1999.

Oops - I just happened to find this forum while browsing through photo.net, and the first question I see is "what does it mean anyway" ...

Well, although I'm not using EOS myself I saw these three letters quite a few times explained as EOS = "Electro-Optical System", since the communication between camera and lenses is completely electronic. I even think this explanation was given by Canon themselves.

And now for the hard part: What does FD mean anyway...?

Dieter

-- Dieter (lefeling@icsmedia.de), April 10, 1999.


FD = Fully (automatic) Diaphragm (maybe) The earlier FL cameras had only stop-down metering, the FD meters with the diaphragm open.

-- Tim Brown (brownt@ase.com), April 15, 1999.

eos-electro-optical-system

-- aaron bernstein (abern00@hotmail.com), May 05, 1999.


There was "learned" discussion on this topic on the EOS mailing list: http://www.psych.helsinki.fi/mailman/listinfo/eos

Believe it or not, there are at least three meanings for EOS, according to official Canon sources. You can choose whichever one you like the best.

"Entirely Organic System" "EOS" - the goddess of dawn in Greek mythology "Electro Optical System" from Chapter 9 in the Story Room of the Canon Camera Museum http://www.canon.co.jp/camera-museum/story/9-j.html

"Electronic Optical System" from Archived Canon Press Releases from EOS system launch, 1987 Feb 17 ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/acs/rec.photo/canon/press_releases/bodies /eos620

See also: http://www.pantheon.org/mythica/articles/e/eos.html http://www.clubi.ie/lestat/ofgodse.html#Eoslink

Cheers Julian Loke

-- Julian Loke (jul.loke@utoronto.ca), May 22, 1999.


It means that some bunch of publicty flacks in a backroom somewhere thought that it sounded really cute/powerful/cutting edge and would be more likely to separate mugs like us from money. Beyond that, it doesn't have to mean anything at all and probably doesn't. Never mind FD - what does Canon mean? Doesn't sound Japanese to me. I believe that Ford paid someone $1 million to come up with the name Mondeo for its small world car. I remember seeing web sites listing disasters in these types of naming exercises - I drive a Mitsubishi Pajero which is renamed a Monterey (?) anywhere that speaks Spanish and sold in UK as a Shogun - good grief. Now why is my EOS 600 called a 630 in the US and Japan?

-- andrew fildes (afildes@rabbit.com.au), June 13, 1999.

Andrew, I believe the name Canon is the anglisized name for what was originally called Kwanon in Japan in the 1930's when the company was founded.

-- Bill Griffin (billgriffin@sympatico.ca), July 25, 1999.

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