Originally Posted by 212man
I was always curious why, having prescribed the words 'affirmative' and 'negative', they then had to shorten the former to avoid confusion when it would have been simpler and less ambiguous to use the words "yes" and "No". Surely no mistaking them???
There are various reasons. In the old days, yes and no were too short for voice activated mikes (R/T phraseology used over intercom). They are also pretty useless on poor quality HF.