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As a naval person,Ping is an auditory term (not like RADAR) used in conjuction with sonar transmissions and consequesence receptions. So the gist of your discussion is dead on wrt connecting, to see/contact with something.Objects are blips ,not pings, on the radar screen.â€Pinging with /on†does generally means touching bases, watz up? kinda of thing.Do not use outside the community.
"Ping" was used in the intelligence community as early as the mid-1970s as a verb to mean a reminder in the nature of a gentle admonition or of an expression of mild concern. "The boss pinged me about getting my reports in on time." Probably lifted from the Navy use described above with some internal evolution. Almost always a reminder from senior to subordinate or from supported to supporting. I don't think I ever heard it as a noun in this sense. BTW, the RADAR equivalent of the technical SONAR term "to ping" seems to be "to paint", which would not work as well in the interpersonal communications context.
I am not a linguist nor an etymologist, but here goes my opinion. I base it on 30+ years performing or managing software development within the US defense industry, including five years with a company that made sonars for the US and foreign Navies. I think the origin is from sonar (sound navigation and ranging). Sonar is based on sound waves transmitted through water, and originally audible to humans by necessity; a human was listening for underwater sounds. There are active and passive sonars. Passive sonars receive signals only, analogous to a microphone. The sonarman must discern merchant ships from war ships, from submarines, from whales, dolphins, shrimp, ... Active sonars are more accurate, but have the disadvantage of giving away your ship's or submarine's position. Active sonars radiate an audible wave form into the water, and when it bounces off of objects, like other ships or submarines, it returns to your vessel's hydrophone (an echo). The return signal is analyzed for direction and time delay, thereby providing an estimate of the direction and distance of objects. I think that ping is an onomatopoeia (thanks to my wife Ann for helping me remember that word) for the active transition. If you have seen the movie "Hunt for Red October", then you have heard a movie sound-man's version of a ping. A ping played a crucial role in the defection of the Russian submarine Captain (played by Sean Connery) to the US intelligence officer (played by Alec Baldwin). I recall the script as "... one ping and one ping only". Tom Clancy, author of the book, does in-depth research to make the atmosphere surrounding his stories authentic.
If I am correct the word was likely coined in the early development of active sonars. Radar signals are not audible to humans, I know of no word that mimics a radar signal.
I am familiar with the IT use of ping and would guess that it was derived from the sonar use; i.e., transmit and wait for a reply to see if an internet server is active.
Working in the defense industry provided frequent contact with active and retired military personnel. The use of ping for gaining information, like "ping him to see what he knows/ thinks", is reasonably common, especially in the Navy, and will likely continue as long as there are sonarmen (now know as Sonar Technicians) and the people who command them or rely on their expertise.
Adding a few more bits of information. I have worked in the underwater sound and sonar field since 1964. Mostly as a physicist associating with oceanographers. As mentioned above, the term "ping" has been associated with sonar systems since the 1940's. Maybe earlier, but the OED does not have cites earlier than 1943.
The computer network analogy to the sonar "ping" was developed in 1983. There is a good summary of it in Wikipedia:
"Mike Muuss wrote the program in December, 1983, as a tool to troubleshoot odd behavior on an IP network. He named it after the pulses of sound made by a sonar, since its operation is analogous to active sonar in submarines, in which an operator issues a pulse of energy at the target, which then bounces from the target and is received by the operator. (The pulse of energy in sonar is analogous to a network packet in ping)."
As another linguistic phenomenon, the Retronym or after-the-fact Acronym, the name Packet InterNet Groper was devised to fit PING.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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