Ovoid

Ovoid (pronounced oh-void)

(1) Egg-shaped (an oval, but more tapered at one end).

(2) In botany (of a fruit or similar part), egg-shaped with the broader end at the base.

1817: From the French ovoïde, from the New Latin ōvoīdēs, the construct being the Classical Latin ōvum (egg) + the Ancient Greek -oeidēs (like) (akin to -oid).  The Latin ōvum (egg) is thought derived from the primitive Indo-European awi (bird) which may be the source of wyo & yyo, the primitive Indo-European words for "egg" although this is speculative.  The hypothetical “evidence” for its existence is provided by the Sanskrit vih, the Avestan vish, the Latin avis (bird), the Ancient Greek aietos (eagle), the Old Church Slavonic aja, the Russian jajco, the Breton ui, the Welsh wy, the Old Norse egg, the Old High German ei and the Gothic ada, all meaning "egg."  The –oid suffix was from the Ancient Greek -ειδής (-eidḗs) & -οειδής (-oeidḗs) (the ο being the last vowel of the stem to which the suffix is attached) from εἶδος (eîdos) (form; like; likeness) and was added to indicate the meanings “tending towards”, “similar to” or “like”).  Ovoid is a noun & adjective and ovoidal the other adjectival form though it is rare; The noun plural is ovoids.  Subovoid (apparently never as sub-ovoid) is a technical word used in mathematics and some disciplines of engineering.

Headlights and Politics

300 SL roadster built for European sale (left) and one with the less elegant assembly used in the US market to accommodate the sealed-beam headlights.

First seen two years earlier on the 300SL roadster (W198), the Lichteinheiten (light units) on the 1959 Mercedes-Benz 220 SE (W111) and the subsequent 1961 300SE (W112) were much admired, both for their elegance and quality of luminescence.  Ovoid in shape, they were first nicknamed “tombstone” but soon came to be called “European” because they were banned in the US, the saga illuminating how crony capitalism works.  The US headlight manufacturers enjoyed a cosy relationship with the legislators who in the 1940s had passed laws decreeing cars sold in the US had to have two 7 inch sealed beam lights and a maximum of two auxiliary 5 ¾ inch units.  In 1957, the car and headlight manufacturers prevailed on the politicians additionally to permit four 5 ¾ inch sealed beam lights per vehicle, a profitable arrangement which pleased the industry but deprived US buyers of the much superior European lights which not only delivered better luminosity but, not being sealed units, required only the bulb to be replaced rather than the whole thing.  The US manufacturers had no interest in investing to re-tool their factories to produce something which would need to be replaced less often so arranged for the politicians to ban the newer product, thus for decades denying American drivers headlights of the quality enjoyed in Europe and much of the planet.  It wouldn't be until the 1970s when, needing a way to lower the hood (bonnet) lines to improve aerodynamic efficiency in the quest for lower fuel consumption to meet new standards, that the laws were changed.

280 SE 3.5 Coupes, the "tombstone" or "European" headlight assemblies to the left, the version developed for the US market to the right.  Such was the international admiration for the "Californian" interpretation that it became a global option.   

That is how politics in the US operates.  It’s in the congresses, state and federal, where things are actually hammered out and deals done.  Most of the world fixates on presidential politics because of the drama and the cults of personality but domestically, it’s in the legislatures that lobbyists do their work and that’s where they make donations to election campaign funds in exchange for getting the legislation which most benefits the corporations employing them.  “The business of America is business” is how former president Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933; US president 1923-1929) summed it up.  It’s not wholly dissimilar to the development of the English constitution; it took centuries to evolve but essentially, in exchange for getting the money he needed to fight his wars, the King of England approved the laws the politicians wished to pass.  In the US, the dynamic relationship is between politicians and corporations, mediated by their lobbyists.

Unfortunately, US regulations proved disfiguring as well as dimming because the simple solution of integrating the turn-signal indicators (the "flashers" to many) and side-marker lamps into the assembly didn’t comply.  As explained by automotive lighting expert Daniel Stern, the lit area was probably compliant (the rules specified a minimum 3½ square inches (22.5 cm²) but the intensity and inboard visibility angles would have been inadequate.  A turn signal with its centre 4 inches (100 mm) or closer to the low-beam lamp had to provide at least 500 candela on-axis, which would be close to impossible for a lamp with this construction; turn signals more than 4 inches from the low-beam needed only to provide at least 200 candela.  The rest of the world (RoW) cars (left) were supplied with the original elegant design while for the US market some rather ugly after-market lamps were crudely added to the gaps next to the grill (centre).  Late in the 1960s, the aesthetics were improved somewhat by using a larger unit (right) which emulated the look of a fog-lamp, the US cars by then also suffering the addition of side-marker lights front & rear.

Another take on the ovoid theme was used when the 600 Grosser (W100) was introduced in 1963 (left).  The solution designed to comply with US legislation (right) was more unhappy even that that used on the 300 SL and called to mind a high-school project which deservedly would have been graded "F".

Mercedes-Benz created a new assembly for the US market, adopting a vertically stacked arrangement with four 5 ¾ inch sealed beams which ironically was much to influence US designers in the decade to come.  When the 300 SEL 6.3 was introduced in 1967, Europeans were offered the choice of either style, four of the newer quartz-halogen bulbs generating even more light than the ovoid system.  Europeans, who nicknamed the stacked lights “Californian” (California apparently the most American thing imaginable), came to admire the style, prompting Mercedes-Benz to offer buyers the option world-wide.  Unfortunately, this was Mercedes-Benz only ascetically successful adaption for the US market, most of the others being ghastly.  In the mid-1960s, the factory did adopt “California” when the W113 (the 230/250/280 SL "pagoda" (1963-1971)) was for some years offered with just a hard-top, presumably because, viewed from Stuttgart, California must have seemed permanently sunny.  The W111’s headlamps spread to other models but the W113 configuration remained a one-off.  It was one of only three occasions a production SL would be offered without a folding top and one of two with only a fixed roof.

Lindsay Lohan in sunglasses with lens in an irregular ovoid.  The irregular ovoid is a popular shape for the lens of spectacles of all kinds, simply because it conforms so well to the lacuna defined by the nose and eye socket.

The four common descriptors in diagnostic imaging (left to right), the round, the oval the ovoidesque irregular oval and the irregular.

Reflecting the frequency with which they occur, in radiology and other forms of diagnostic imaging, the three classic shapes of “masses of interest” are round, oval and irregular but a frequent descriptor of those which often resemble ovoids is the “irregular oval” used (a little misleadingly for non-clinicians) to describe everything which tends towards being an oval but is outside the defined tolerance.  The rationale in adding an adjectival “irregular” to “oval” seems to be to reflect the wide variation in the shapes, the only common characteristic being that to fit the description it must be vaguely ovoid in shape, distinguishing it not only from a round or oval but also from an irregular (ie everything else).