Scanning the past - The birth of the term "microwaves"

The term microwaves was used for the first time in an international journal in the October 1932 issue of the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) in an article by Nella Carrara: "The detection of microwaves" [1] (the original manuscript was received by the Institute on April 2, 1932). This term has been, since then, commonly used to indicate those electromagnetic waves with wavelength ranging from 1 mm to 1 m. These limits have been arbitrarily defined: in practice they constitute an attempt to define the microwave frequency range as the one located between the frequencies of electromagnetic waves employed for radio and television broadcasting and those of infrared rays.