Blue Wire

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What Does Blue Wire Mean?

Blue wire generally refers to a type of wire or cable that is added to a hardware product at a factory in order to resolve design problems.

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Blue wires are also known as bodge wires in British English.

Techopedia Explains Blue Wire

The implication with blue wire is that someone has made mistakes in a design, or there has been a design error somewhere along the way. Adding a blue wire strategically is a quick way to perform immediate problem solving in production before shipping products out to buyers.

Like other terms for colored wire in IT, blue wire doesn’t necessarily mean that the wire involved is shielded in blue—it can be shielded in any color. The term blue wire describes the wire’s use, much like the term "purple wire" is used for debugging wire, where the wires involved are often not actually purple.

In terms of actual hardware, blue wire is often composed of 30 AWG gauge wire. This wire is .01 inches or .25 mm in diameter, and requires dozens of turns per inch. However, blue wire is also available in different gauges.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.