Amphenol Backplane System's initial product offering for defense & aerospace applications was the 40-pin NAFI-style interconnect, co-developed by Amphenol and the U.S. Navy in the late 1960s. NAFI is an acronym for Naval Avionics Facility--Indianapolis, and it was together with this organization that Amphenol helped develop the form-factor for interconnecting modules and daughterboards through a central backplane.

The function of the simple, 0.100" x 0.100"-grid, two-row connector was to interconnect the small SEM (Standard Electronic Module) Format-A daughterboards. The connector comprised two elements: a daughterboard connector with 'male blade' contacts, and a backplane connector populated with female 'tuning fork' contacts. Over the years, the need for more and more interconnects at the edge of the module led the Navy--and Amphenol--to develop higher-density variants of this basic 'fork-and-blade' interconnect. Design flexibility is a hallmark at Amphenol, and the basic NAFI interconnect style is adaptable in numerous ways...including cable I/O interconnects to allow stranded cable terminations to mate with the backplane.