As I understand it, it comes from MANY years ago - where you would use a wooden board (such as a breadboard), and knock small nails into it. You then soldered the components to the protruding heads of the nails, and ran wires between them.
When the modern 'plug in' boards appeared, they 'stole' the name.
And I though it's because it looks like white sliced bread (white plastic) and because it's easy to insert parts into bread (it's soft)... Interesting :lol:
Years ago, before candy bars and such where available, techies used to snack on bread...believe it or not. They also used to wear an onion on their belt, which was the fashion at the time.
Well, inevitably, they would get so many bread crumbs on their desks - and especially the circuits they were working on - that they referred to the area as the breadboard. Later on someone came up with the idea of sockets.