Dweezil Dwarftosser wrote:

David wrote:

What is the history and meaning behind the work "MARK" to designate military
equipment ? The web site www.designation-systems.net says the Navy uses
the Mark - Mod nomenclature but doesn't say what the significance or meaning
of the word "Mark" is. Does anybody know ?

I've only seen one such designation, on a weapon - and it passed
out of our on-base inventory sometime in the late 1970s:
the MK 1 Mod 0 Walleye TV-guided glide bomb, sometimes referred
to as the AGM-62. Think of a big Maverick (AGM-65) missile but
with a bigger warhead and RAT generator instead of the rocket motor.
The Maverick used nearly the same video specs as the earlier
Walleye.

The Mark system was used by BuOrd (the USN's Bureau of Ordnance) to designate
weapons and related systems that they designed (or were designed at their behest),
which included Walleye. The Mk. 80 series bombs are another BuOrd weapon (M-series
bombs like the M117 are Army or Air Force derived). Things get more complicated
because not all navy weapons were designed by BuOrd, and other Bureaus (e.g.
BuAer) used other designation systems. Theoretically the Mark series should have
gone away when the tri-service designations took over in 1962, but remnants of it
remain in use.

Guy