GR connector

The GR connector, officially the General Radio Type 874, was a type of RF connector used for terminating coaxial cable. Designed by the General Radio Corporation, it was widely used on their electronic test equipment throughout the 60s and 70s.

The connector had several desirable properties:

* Good control of the electrical impedance across a wide range of frequencies
* Reliable mating
* Hermaphrodism, so there were no "male" or "female" connectors; any GR connector could mate with any other GR connector.

This last characteristic was achieved by having both the inner and outer conductors made from four leaves, two of which were displaced slightly outwards and two of which were displaced slightly inwards. By rotating one connector by 90 degrees, its inner leaves would mate with the other connector's outer leaves and vice-versa.

Adapters to other connector series were available.

Eventually, the high cost of the connector led to it being obsoleted by the much more common BNC connector and, for high-precision applications, N connectors and SMA connectors. General Radio designed the incompatible Type 900 successor to the 874, to address the higher performance needs of the industry, but it was not very successful.