What is the difference between contact points & contact breakers in vintage motorcycles?

Question

What is the difference between contact points & contact breakers in vintage motorcycles?

Answer 1

The only difference is the spelling

Answer 2

Same thing Some say points -Some say breaker

" Contact breaker points" to be exact

Answer 3

points is US term breaker is UK term same thing

Answer 4

The earlier bikes had this simple method of timing, which would determine the position of the crank (top dead centre) with the help of a fibre cam and with the help of a small device called contact breaker, which would make or break the supply of low tension to the high tension coil which in turn would feed the spark plug with a strong voltage.  

So this small sub-assembly is called contact breaker which in turn, consisted of two tiny flat discs, called contact points (which had to be cleaned and adjusted periodically) alongwith a small tension strip and a fibre cam which runs off the crank shaft on one side of the bike.

This was an area of maintenance which made starting problematic sometimes and also restricted high r.p.m. performance because of points bouncing.  Luckily this all gave way in the 70's to solid state ignition timing also called CDI (capacitor discharge ignition) which we use till this day and which has gone a long way to make our vehicles reliable and troublefree.