Greenhouse (pronounced green-hous)
(1) A structure usually with a skeletal frame supporting
panes of glass, Perspex or other translucent materials in which conditions such
as temperature, humidity and irrigation are maintained within a desired range,
used for cultivating delicate plants or growing plants out of season.
(2) In UK military slang, the clear material of an
aircraft’s cockpit (now rare).
(3) In automotive design, the glass (and Perspex) between
the beltline and roofline (also called the "glasshouse").
(4) In surgical medicine, a structure shielding an operating
table and designed to protect from the transmission of bacteria.
(5) In climatology, as “greenhouse effect”, a description
of the general global consequences of the increasing atmospheric concentrations
of “greenhouse gases”, notably carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4)
et al).
(6) In climatology, a hot state in the global climate.
(7) To place (plants) in a greenhouse and (figuratively),
to nurture something in some way to promote growth or development.
1655–1665: From the late Middle English greenhouse (house for growing greens), the reference to the vegetables grown (the produce of
various colors but much of the foliage was green during the growing process). The construct was green + house and the form
green-house, while now less common, still runs in parallel. Green was from the Middle English grene, from the Old English grēne, from the Proto-West Germanic grōnī, from the Proto-Germanic grōniz, from the primitive Indo-European
ghreh (to grow). The
related forms include the North Frisian green, the West Frisian grien, the Dutch groen, the Low German grön,
green & greun, the German grün, the
Danish & Norwegian Nynorsk grøn, the
Swedish grön, the Norwegian Bokmål grønn and the Icelandic grænn.
The noun use to refer to the color developed from the earlier references
to vegetables and having “grened”. House was from the Middle English hous & hus, from the Old English hūs
(dwelling, shelter, house), from the Proto-West Germanic hūs, from the Proto-Germanic hūsą
(and comparable with the Scots hoose,
the West Frisian hûs, the Dutch huis, the German Haus, the German Low German Huus,
the Danish hus, the Faroese hús, the Icelandic hús, the Norwegian Bokmål hus,
the Norwegian Nynorsk hus &
Swedish hus). The Germanic forms may have been from the
primitive Indo-European skews & kews-, from skewh & kewh- (to
cover, to hide). The word supplanted the
non-native Middle English meson &
measoun (house), from the Old French maison (house). The now rare (and effectively probable extinct)
plural housen was from the Middle English husen
& housen. In the Old English the nominative plural was hūs.
Greenhouse is a noun & verb and greenhousing & greenhoused are
verbs; the noun plural is greenhouses.
As structures used to create artificial, environments, optimized
for the cultivation of plants, greenhouse has several synonyms. The earlier noun conservatory dates from the
1560s in the sense of “a preservative”, a development of the adjectival use (having
the quality of preserving), from the Latin conservator
(keeper, preserver, defender), an agent noun from conservare. The meaning “a
place for preserving or carefully keeping anything” emerged in the 1610s and
when used for the growing of flowers & vegetables, such structures came in
the 1650s be called greenhouses. In
English, the formal use in musical education as “a school of music; a place for
the performing arts” dates from 1805, from the Italian conservatorio or the French conservatoire
(places of public instruction and training in some branch of science or the
arts, especially music), from the Medieval Latin conservatorium. The first
places so described were Italian and the word came into use in France after the
Revolution (1789); the Italian word was used in English after 1771. Among gardeners and horticulturalists, by the
mid-nineteenth century earthier terms such as “planthouse” and “hothouse” were
in use, even in places of serious scientific study such as London’s Kew Gardens
(the Royal Botanic Gardens) which, for practical reasons, adopted for various
greenhouses pragmatic descriptions such as “Palm House”, “Orchid House” et al.
A twentieth century coining was the “poly house”, an allusion to the use of thick, translucent polythene which in the 1930s, supplied at low cost in rolls by the US petrochemical industry, was instant popular, enabling greenhouses to be built quickly and cheaply. The related “poly tunnel” & “poly-tube” described the use of the same material to produce even smaller micro-environments with the fabrication of long, “roofs” (semi-circular with the appearance of a tube although without a base) which covered the rows of plants; depending on the crop, such structures could be only a few inches high. There was also the “potting shed” which was different in that it wasn’t a place with any form of climate control and simply a place a gardener (professional or amateur) could work with their tools, pots etc falling conveniently to hand. “Potting shed” however has been a “loaded” euphemism and metonym since the publication of DH Lawrence’s (1885–1930) Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) which wasn’t generally available in the UK until 1961 when R v Penguin Books was decided. That was a test case of recent legislative amendments in which a jury found the novel satisfied the new provision that the work was “in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern”. According to some (and they still exist in the Conservative Party), society has since been in decline. In the novel, more was fertilized in the potting shed than the plants.
Most reputable sources define the greenhouse effect (on Earth and other heavenly bodies) as something like: “The radiative effect of all infrared absorbing constituents in the atmosphere”. The operation of the greenhouse effect is not unique to the Earth of the post-industrial revolution but what makes it historically unusual is (1) the rapidity of the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) and (2) that so much of the increase is due to human activity (mostly the burning of fossil fuels). In the early nineteenth century, French scientists had published papers describing what would later come to be known as the greenhouse effect, deconstructing the consequences of differing compositions in the Earth’s atmosphere and it was a Swedish meteorologist who first applied the term “greenhouse”, an example of the use of a term the general population would find more accessible than the sometime arcane language of science. The term “greenhouse seems first to have appeared in print in 1937 but for decades, perception of the phenomenon as a problem was restricted to a handful of specialists and even in the scientific community there were many who viewed it as something benign or even beneficial, there being an awareness a rising temperature would make more of the planet habitable and the increasing volume of CO2 would encourage plant growth, thus benefiting agriculture. At the time, climate science was in its infancy, satellites and the big computers needed to model the climate system were decades away and the data on which to develop theories simply didn’t exist. Additionally, it wasn’t until well into the second half of the century those emissions began radically to increase, the assumptions long that any possible problems probably wouldn’t emerge for centuries.
So “greenhouse effect” never really worked as a term successfully to convey the degree of seriousness the issue deserved. Accordingly, academics, the activist communities and sympathetic journalists began in the late 1970s to use other words but “global warming” although accurate, really wasn’t much of an improvement because “warm” is a generally “positive” word, used to covey the idea of “kindness, friendliness or affection” and while many people probably thought their climate was already hot enough, more (especially those in the “global north”) would probably have welcomed generally warmer weather. So that didn’t gain the necessary traction and by the early 1990s, “climate change” began to be used interchangeably with “global warming”, the old “greenhouse effect” by now abandoned. The scientific rationale for this was that in the narrow technical sense, global warming describes only increased surface warming, while climate change describes the totality of changes to Earth's climate system. However, until well into the twenty-first century, for most of the population in the First World, what in retrospect have come to be understood as manifestations of climate change, things were hardly obvious. By the 2020s, the linguistic implications in messaging seemed finally understood and “climate crisis”, “climate emergency” and “climate catastrophe” became the preferred terms and while the “climate change deniers” seem now less numerous (at least some perhaps having perished from heat stroke or drowned in one of the “once in 500 year floods” which seem now frequent). In the political discourse, "climate crisis" and "global heating" seem now the popular forms.
The
Automotive Greenhouse
1970 Series 2 Fiat 124 Coupé (left) and 2022 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE (right).
The
Fiat and Chevrolet represent two approaches to the coupé greenhouse (styled also as the "glasshouse") and both
attracted some comment from critics, the Fiat because it was judged around an
inch (25 mm) too high to achieve aesthetic success and the Chevrolet because it
was too low (the estimates of by how much varied). The Italian car however was much admired and
enjoyed strong demand for most of its life (1967-1975 and given what followed the
end of production was probably premature), and at least some of the success was
attributable to the comfortable cabin with its generous headspace and the greenhouse
which provided outstanding visibility in all directions, am important aspect of
what was coming to be understood as “passive safety” (as opposed to “active
safety” elements such as seat-belts or crumple-zones). The low roof-line on the Chevrolet was thought
by some to give the car a “cartoonish” quality although it’s a subjective
judgment whether that detracted from the look and certainly it lent the thing a
low-slung, sporty appearance which was after all presumably what most appealed
to the target market. The practical
drawback was the abbreviated greenhouse meant a dark cabin and some compromise
in the ease of ingress & egress although descriptions suggesting the space
was “claustrophobic” or “oppressive” seem hyperbolic. As a retro take on the original Camaro
(1967-1969), the fifth (2010-2015) & sixth (2016-2024) generation models
were well executed although greenhouse and other details unsettled some.
Standard and Spezial coachwork on the Mercedes-Benz 300d (W189, 1957-1962). The "standard" four-door hardtop was available throughout the run while the four-door Cabriolet D was offered (off and on) between 1958-1962 and the Spezials (landaulets, high-roofs et al), most of which were for state or diplomatic use, were made on a separate assembly line in 1960-1961. The standard greenhouse cars are to the left, those with the high roof-line to the right.
The 300d (W189, 1957-1962)
was a revised version of the W186 (300, 300b & 300c; 1951-1957) which came
to be referred to as the "Adenauer" because several were used as
state cars by Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967; chancellor of the FRG (West Germany)
1949-1963). Although the coachwork never
exactly embraced the lines of mid-century modernism, the integration of the
lines of the 1950s with the pre-war motifs appealed to the target market
(commerce, diplomacy and the old & rich) and on the platform the factory built
various Spezials including long
wheelbase "pullmans", landaulets, high-roof limousines and four-door
cabriolets (Cabriolet D in the Daimler-Benz system). The high roofline appeared sometimes on both
the closed & open cars and even then, years before the assassination of John
Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963), the greenhouse sometimes
featured “bullet-proof” glass.
Two from the Daimler-Benz Spezial line: The 1965 Papal Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100) Landaulet (left) built for Pope Paul VI (1897-1978; pope 1963-1978) (left) and the one-off short wheelbase (SWB) 600 Landaulet (right) built for racing driver Graf von Berckheim (Count Graf Philipp-Constantin Eduard Siegmund Clemens Tassilo Tobias von Berckheim, 1924-1984).
The Papal 600 used the higher roof-line which was a feature of some of the Spezial Pullmans & Pullman Landaulets. The attractions of the high-roof coachwork was (1) greater headroom which afforded more convenient ingress & egress (a practical matter given the cars were sometime parade vehicles used by royalty and military dictators, both classes given to wearing crowns or big hats) and (2) the extended greenhouse made it easier for crowds to see the occupants. Count von Berckheim's car used the standard roof-line and was the only SWB Landaulet, the other 59 all built on the LWB Pullman platform.
No comments:
Post a Comment