Knob (pronounced nob)
(1) A
projecting part, usually rounded, forming the handle of a door, drawer
window-frame or the like.
(2) A (usually)
ball-shaped part of a handle, lever etc, designed to be grasped by the hand.
(3) In
machinery, an almost always rounded control switch that can be rotated on it
axis (ie to turn on/off, raise/lower volume etc), designed to be operated by
the fingers and visually also emulated in software on screens.
(4) A
rounded lump or protuberance on the surface or at the end of something, as a
knot on a tree trunk or a fleshy lump or caruncle.
(5) A
rounded ornament on the hilt of an edged weapon (the pommel).
(6) In
architecture, furniture design etc, an ornamental boss, as of carved work.
(7) In
geography, a rounded hill, mountain, a knoll, an elevation on a ridge or morainic
ridge.
(8) In
botany, a bulb of the garlic plant consisting of multiple cloves in a chunky
branch,
(9) In
certain military and other institutions, a new recruit.
(10) In
hunting & animal husbandry (as knobber), a hart in its second year; a young
male deer.
(11) In
cooking, a dollop, an amount just larger than a spoonful (used usually in
reference to butter and in professional catering there are “butter curlers”
which produce an attractive ribbed-curl of butter to be served with the
bread-rolls, each curl said to be the equivalent of a “half dollop”.
(12) In
slang, the head, thus a person with red hair being a “gainer knob”.
(13) In
vulgar slang the head (glans (spongiosum)) of the penis but sometimes used of
the whole organ, thus the slang “knobhead” (an unintelligent or contemptible
person) and a “literal” synonym of “dickhead”), sometimes used in the forms
“knobber” & “knobber”.
(14) In
vulgar slang (by extension), to have sexual intercourse with (someone).
(15) In
vulgar slang (usually in the plural), a woman's breasts (sometimes with a
modifier thought appropriate to the anatomy specifically being referenced).
(16) In
vulgar slang, the clitoris.
(17) To
produce a knob on (an object).
(18) To
furnish with a knob, typically for a functional purpose (adding one to a door,
window frame etc) but also as an ornament.
(19) To
turn an object into a knob (rare).
(20) In
stone cutting, to knock off (excess stone) preparatory to dressing; to knobble;
to skiffle.
1350–1400:
From the Middle English knobe & knobbe, thought almost certainly from a Scandinavian
or German source and probably at least influenced by the Middle Low German knubbe & knobbe (knob; knot in wood; bud), the Middle Dutch knobbe & cnoppe, the Dutch knop (knob,
button, bud), the Old Frisian knopp &
knapp, the Old High German knopf (bud, pommel of a sword, knot,
loop), the Middle High German knospe,
the German Knopf (button, knob) &
Knospe (bud), the Danish knap (button) & knop (knob, button, bud) and the Old Norse knyfill (short horn). Most
etymologists seem most convinced by it being a variant of the Proto-Germanic knappô (knob, lump) & knuppô (lump, clod), both among the “kn-”
words related to knudaną (to knead). Probably related were the Middle English knap & knappe (small projection, knob (in the sense of “button, tassel,
tuft etc”), hill, hilltop etc)), from the Old English cnæp & cnæpp (summit,
top), which may in some way be linked with the Old Norse knappr (small projection, knob (in the sense of “button, head of a
stick etc”)) (and from which English gained knop),
the source again the Proto-Germanic knappô. The meaning “knoll, isolated round hill”
seems first to have appeared in the 1640s and, perhaps surprisingly, no
instance of “doorknob” has been found prior to 1829 although the word may have
been long in oral use (drawer-knob, window-knob etc all followed). Knob is a noun & verb, knobless is a
noun, knobbed & knobbing are verbs, knoblike & knobby are adjectives;
the noun plural is knobs.
In idiomatic
use, the phrase “same to you with knobs (sometimes “brass knobs”) means “the same
to you but even more so” (used typically in response to an insult or
slight). A “knob-twiddler” can be an
informal term for a technician or console operator whose job entails adjusting
electronic devices via knobs but it can also describe anyone whose role seems
either unimportant or not particularly demanding. As machinery and later electronics became an
increasingly ubiquitous part of life, so did knobs and as early as the late
nineteenth century the humorous “knobologist” had been coined to describe both
those designing the system and the “knob-twiddlers” using them; the discipline
of design was of course dubbed “knobology” and that remains a core component of
ergonomics, exploring imperatives such as placement, size, tactility and
labelling, all of which influence the functionality of controls on an
instrument as relevant to their application.
The knobologists deeply were implicated in convenient physical switches,
knobs and buttons disappearing from cars and re-imagined virtualizations on
inconvenient touch-screens. Such has
been the reaction (including the realization the change made driving more
accident prone) that the tactile controls are making a welcome comeback. The now archaic “knob-thatcher” was an
affectionate term for a maker of wigs while the more modern “surfer's knob” was
slang from the sport, describing a hard bump or nodule on a surfer's knee, shin
or ankle, resulting from recurrent contact with their surfboard. In engineering and metallurgy, “to knobble”
was (1) to render a surface with a knobbly finish and (2) to produce wrought
iron by treating semi-refined puddled iron on a hearth before shingling, a
specialized device in the business being the ominous sounding “knobbling
furnace”.
Because knob was popular slang for penis, a number of derived terms
predictably emerged. A “knob polisher”
or “knob-gobbler” was “one who gives fellatio”.
“Knob rot” was a reference to certain sexually transmitted diseases
contracted by men, the acute condition “galloping knob rot” describing a rapidly
progressing or uncontrollable variant of the condition. A “knob job” was the act of fellatio. “Knob cheese” (the terms “cock cheese”, “dick
cheese” and (in context) even “cheese”) was vulgar slang for smegma (a whitish
sebaceous secretion that collects between the glans penis and foreskin or in
the vulva). “Knob jockey” must however
be used with care because it has variously been applied to (1) gay men, (2) promiscuous
straight women and (3) promiscuous straight men; context thus matters.
To this
day, the myth persists the balsa-wood gear-shift knob used in the Porsche 917
was there as a “weight-saving measure”.
While it’s true the small knob was light, the difference between it and
the aluminum or magnesium units the company had fitted to earlier race cars
would have been so insignificant it’s doubtful it would have equalled a gulp of
coffee the driver may or may not have enjoyed.
The stylish timber piece was however not a decorative flourish but a legitimate
engineering solution to ameliorate one manifestation of “chronic heat
soak”. In 1969, the 917 was a radical
advance which, Dreadnought-like, rendered all other cars in its class
instantly obsolescent but the flat-12 engine (Porsche’s first in the
configuration) radiated so much heat it was difficult to manage.
In a tradition it would not for decades abandon, Porsche continued to
use air-cooling for the engine (which really means “oil cooled” about as much)
and it ran hot; between that heat source and the gear level was a unbroken
metal path, each component a most efficient conductor. During endurance racing
(some events conducted over 24 hours), cockpit temperatures could reach what
doctors would rate as “extreme”.
The metal lever was just one of the sources of this heat and the knob
(which sat next to the driver’s knee) needed to be grasped by the driver, often
many times a minute; were it to become so hot it caused pain, it would have
been safety issue. Although in 1969 the
space-age was at its zenith, the materials which could have made a driver’s
gloves close to heat-proof were not then commercially available so they gained
much of their protective quality from thickness but the problem was they could
be only so thick because a driver needed still to handle a highly-geared
steering wheel and operate the many knobs and switches within arm’s reach. Balsa-wood, with its very low thermal
conductivity was ideal because while not exactly cool to the touch after a few
hours on the track, it never got so hot it felt unpleasant. It also had adequate strength for its task; a
gear-lever knob does not bear structural loads and, being Porsche, it received
the same careful attention as every other component, each one precisely
machined to exact dimensions before receiving two coats of clear lacquer. Most variants of the 917 used the Balsa-wood part although when (as the “Turbo-panzers”) the most powerful of the breed appeared in the Can-Am (for Group 7, unlimited displacement sports cars) a metal knob
was fitted, made possible because Group 7 was for open cars and significantly
that reduced cabin temperatures. By the
late 1970s when the space age had made available materials (phenolic plastics,
composites etc) with superior insulation qualities, the need to resort to a
balsa-wood knob vanished but the visual appeal remained and in the aftermarket,
917-style knobs remain widely available.
“Suicide knob” was the most popular
name for the device attached to a vehicle’s steering wheel which facilitated easier
“single arm steering”. The idea dated
from the days before the almost universal fitting of power-steering and the
things became popular in the US in the US in the 1950s and 1960s as even
low-priced cars became heavier; for some drivers, they were invaluable when manoeuvring
at low speed, especially when reversing.
They were known also as the “necker knob”, “wheel spinner” and “granny
knob” but the most correct term was “Brodie Knob”, the name in honor of Steve
Brodie (1861–1901), an apparently rather raffish gentleman from New York City who,
as a last resort in 1886 after losing everything gambling, staged a stunt in
which he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge (site of a good many suicides), the
lure a sum of money he was bet although the details of that are murky. Mr Brodie anyway survived to collect on the
wager and, on the basis of the notoriety gained, began performing other
dare-devil acts for even more money. So
the jump from the Brooklyn Bridge was a good career move although the consensus
now is it was a cunning stunt (ie a scam), a weighted dummy the real diver with Mr Brodie entering the
water from the safety of the shoreline.
In fairness, at least some of his subsequent dangerous stunts were verified
by observation and he parlayed his fame into a successful career in business, becoming
a noted philanthropist and dying a rich man.
The invention of the suicide knob
generally is credited to Joel Thorp of Wisconsin but similar devices had for
centuries been in use on land and water.
What Mr Thorpe described in the supporting documents for what was issued
as US Patent 2,101,519 STEERING WHEEL SPINNER KNOB (Dec 7, 1937) was an “improvement”
of the concept:
“The present invention relates generally to improvements in
appliances for facilitating manipulation of the steering wheels of vehicles,
and relates more specifically to improvements in the construction and operation
of spinner knob attachments co-operable with the peripheral rims of steering
wheels or the like in order to effect more convenient and rapid operation of
such wheels under certain conditions of use.
Generally defined, an object of my present invention is to provide an
improved steering wheel spinner knob which is simple in construction and highly
efficient in use.”
Although widely used on tractors, heavy transport vehicles and such, it was in the 1950s as cars in the US became heavier the suicide knobs gained popularity and some of that was due to reasons Mr Thorp probably never envisaged. One receptive market was males aged 17-25 (a crew infamous for many reasons) who found the combination of suicide knob and bench seat made an idea ecosystem, enabling one hand to be used steer the vehicle while the "free" arm could wrap around the girlfriend (or alternative) who affectionately was resting her head on the driver’s shoulder. In this arrangement, a driver’s attention more easily could be divided between her and the road. It was also males aged 17-25 who were the core of the hot-rod community which began as a West Coast phenomenon (induced by a critical mass of the right demographic, available disposable income and a good supply of cheap, used cars which easily could be modified as desired) and they found suicide knobs the best way to “do a half donut” (a spin of one’s hot rod through 180o), the trick being to grip the knob and then suddenly turn the wheel while applying full throttle, resulting in a loud, spectacular maneuver, made the more pleasing for the driver by him having “left his mark” in strips of runner on the road. This, the hot rodders called “spinning a brodie”, a variant on the earlier “doing a Brodie” (a dangerous or otherwise inadvisable act) which entered the language after the nation-wide publicity which followed Mr Brodie’s alleged leap from the Brooklyn Bridge. In the era, a Brodie Knob was as essential a piece of equipment as one’s packet of unfiltered Camel cigarettes or pair of fluffy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror.
The dark appellation “suicide knob” was bestowed because (1) the devices came to be associated with accident-prone drivers (the “males aged 17-25” cohort prominent in the statistics) who probably did use the things to engage in “risk-taking” and (2) by virtue of their location (by default affixed to the upper quadrant) on the wheel, they were a genuine danger in accidents and, in an era of non-collapsible steering columns, tales of them penetrating the eye socket, causing irreparable loss of vision and traumatic brain injury, were legion. The crusading US lawyer Ralph Nadar (b 1934) is criticized for much but the contribution his book Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) made to reducing the death toll on the roads cannot be under-estimated and the effect was world-wide because the rest the industry eventually followed the lead of the US legislation which came in the book’s wake. In the US and elsewhere, change was of course resisted but it came and while it’s not possible to estimate how many deaths and often gruesome injuries the reforms prevented, no one denies it’s a big number. The suicide knob was one minor casualty of the movement and in road-registered vehicles, in most jurisdictions (although some US states remain permissive), such devices are permitted only for specialized (often low-speed) vehicles and if used by drivers with some disability which precludes the use of conventional controls.
Another to make a life-saving contribution to reducing the road told was George Hurst (1927-1986; founder of his eponymous company) whose great legacy to humanity was the “Jaws of Life”, a hydraulic cutter he first developed in 1961 after being shocked at how long it sometimes took to extract the driver from the crumpled wreck of a race car. The great advantage of the “Jaws of Life” was that it worked like a very powerful pair of scissors, avoiding the showers of sparks produced by mechanical saws, always a risk to use in areas where fuel is likely to have been spilled. The basic design came to be used in hydraulic rescue devices worldwide and quite how many lives have been saved by virtue of its use isn’t known but again, it would be a big number.
Two decades of progress: Shifter for the two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission in 1953 Chevrolet Corvette (left) and a classic spherical shift knob in 1972 Chevrolet Corvette LT1. The delicate-looking shifter in the 1953 Corvette seems modest but the location was a world-first for an automatic and was efficient because the location (between the driver’s seat and transmission tunnel) provided the shortest possible path to the linkage. As late as 1964, Chrysler used a similar apparatus in the 1964 300K.
However, before the Jaws of Life, Hurst was already famous in the vibrant sub-culture which was at the times also known for its propensity to purchase and install suicide knobs. Hurst produced “shifters” which were the assemblies connected to a transmission, used by the driver to “change gears” and they proved instantly popular which may seem strange given every manufacturer at the time included a shifter with every vehicle. However, beginning in the late 1930s, the US manufacturers had begun moving from centrally located, floor-mounted levers to units on the steering column because it made for better packaging efficiency in the cabins, then optimized for bench-seats with three-astride seating. That move achieved the goal but with the linkage between lever and gear-changing mechanism now longer and making more turns, some precision in the shifting was lost and column shifting (the once almost universal “three on the tree”) was less conducive to an enthusiastic driving style (such as that of the “suicide knob equipped” crowd). It was in the 1950s the taste for floor-shifts like those in European sports cars began to gain critical mass and even though the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette was hardly a sports car in the tradition of MGs, Fiats and such, it’s notable Chevrolet from the start installed a floor shift for the (two-speed!) Powerglide automatic transmission; it may not have been a sports car with a “four-on-the-floor” but it had a floor-shift so there was that. Automatic transmissions in mass-produced cars was then something of a novelty barely a decade old and the Corvette’s floor shift was apparently a world-first.
Four-speed
manual transmissions began to appear in Detroit-made cars in the late 1950s and
within half a decade George Hurst’s shifters were close to obligatory for any
racer (authorized or not) seeking “street cred” and it wasn’t a confected image, the Hurst shifters demonstratively superior without being excessively expensive. So stellar did their reputation become even
GM (General Motors) relaxed their long-standing ban on other brand-names being
associated with their products and made a feature of one being standard
equipment of the 1964 Pontiac GTO, the car credited with being “the first muscle car” and such was the success in 1965 the shifter’s handle was even
permitted to be embossed: HURST. Soon,
other manufacturers actively were seeking co-productions. George Hurst’s path to market domination was
shockingly simple and might have come from a textbook: (1) a perfected design, (2)
skilful engineering in development, (3) high quality in production and (4) an
attractive price, a combination of elements with great appeal for buyers and
manufacturers alike.
Hurst’s dual-gate automatic transmission “His and Hers” shifter with conventional apparatus “for the automatic minded little lady” and a performance-oriented configuration offering manual control for the “man who really wanted a 4-speed standard stick but bought this extra just for her.” Note the unfamiliar shift pattern, the now universal PRNDL not an industry standard until 1965, the year before it was demanded by regulations. From the early days of automatic transmissions in the 1940s, reverse had been directly adjacent to Low, allowing drivers more easily to emulate what was done with manual transmissions when a “rocking” was being induced to try to free a vehicle from mud or snow. It was a quirk of the age and, because reliability was not then what decades later came to be expected, the early transmissions included a second (rear) fluid pump to permit push/tow/hill starts. Probably, not many much dwelt on the shape of the knob Hurst put atop the His and Hers” shifter but in geometry it would be described as an oblate spheroid with two parallel planar truncations. Now easily modelled in software rendered with a 3D printer, perfecting a shape like this for production used to absorb much time on the drawing board and in the creation of prototypes. A spheroid is an ellipsoid generated by rotating an ellipse about one of its principal axes which, if “stretched” along one axis becomes a prolate spheroid (ie elongated and something like a rugby ball). If slightly flattened along the axis of rotation, it’s an oblate spheroid (like planet Earth which isn’t quite a pure sphere) but the His & Hers knob, having a slight elongation along the shifter’s axis, is closest to a prolate spheroid. The planar-truncation (ie sliced by two parallel planes) created the (left & right) flat faces and the knob can thus be described as a “truncated ellipsoid” or “truncated prolate spheroid” but anyone wishing to out-nerd the rest would probably coin something like “biaxial ellipsoid with parallel planar truncations”.
It was early in the era of second-wave feminism (1960s-1980s) that George Hurst made his brief foray into marriage guidance counselling. First-wave feminism (1895-1950s) is sometimes called the “de jure” or “structural” period because the focus was on legal issues such as women's suffrage, property rights and political candidacy but, in the West, an early victory was overcoming any opposition to women being granted driver’s licences. Attitudes however evolved not wholly in parallel with legal rights and even today, among some, the view persists it’s men who are focused on performance and speed while women value vehicles using other criteria. Impressionistically, that stereotype is not wholly without foundation but, since second wave feminism reset the rules, it’s no longer possible to run advertising perpetuating the notion. The “His and Hers” shifter worked with a key-lock which enabled the husband to ensure only he could use the “manual override” feature and the idea in recent decades has been revived although this time the target of the lockout includes one’s (presumably male) children and any concierge or attendant who might be entrusted with parking one’s car.
Advertisement for Hurst's "custom knobs" (left) and the famous Hurst "pistol grip shifter" in 1970 Plymouth 'Cuda 440+6 (ie 3 x 2bbl carburetors) (right).
The
magic of Hurst’s shifters was in the mechanism but, just as for computer users
the mouse and keyboard assume great importance because it’s by touching these relatively
simple pieces of hardware that use can be made of the machine’s more sophisticated
internals, it was the shifter’s knob which was a driver’s most intimate
connection with the transmission.
Although in the art deco era there had been some lovely detailing, it
wasn’t until the 1960s most conceptually moved beyond beyond “variations on a theme of
sphere” and Hurst was among the manufacturers to explore shapes and substances. There were “T-Handles” (which, usually as "T-Bars", were for decades popular
around the world for automatics) and “Horseshoes” which attracted admiring
glances but didn’t catch on and any number of novelty items including billiard
balls (the “8 ball” predictably a favourite of the V8 crowd) and scale models
of this and that including human body parts such as the skull and mammary
gland. Knobs could be of plastic, wood
or various metals and came in designer colors, velvet coatings a nice touch of the
1960s. The most fetishized of the muscle
car era however was Hurst’s “Pistol Grip Shifter” which did what it said on the
tin: it gave the user the feeling of holding a handgun. In the 1960s, gun culture in the US hadn’t
yet become what it is today (as now defined, the first “mass-shooting” didn’t happen
until 1966) but it was still a place with a lot of firearms. However, despite the potential implications,
when in 1970 Chrysler made one standard equipment on the 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda, one
brochure made mention of the device only with the bland: “...a convenient pistol grip”. For a corporation which called the Cuda’s
hood scoop the I.Q.E.C.A.G. (Incredible
Quivering Exposed Cold Air Grabber), it seemed a missed opportunity though
they didn’t have much linguistic luck with I.Q.E.C.A.G., customers and everybody
else deciding it was a “shaker”.
Ginger knob Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, approaching 23 Egerton Terrace (tagged 7 for the film), Knightsbridge, SW3, London (the front door with a knob, left) and standing next to a door with a handle (right), from a photo-shoot by Rebecca Lader.
Architecturally,
the choice between specifying door levers or door knobs is often one of mere
preference or aesthetic conformity but for public or commercial buildings, some
regulatory authorities now mandate the use of levers because typically they are
easier to use for those with disabilities (especially if hand-mobility is limited) as
they demand less dexterity.
Additionally, being circular and often highly polished, knobs can be
hard to use with wet hands so that’s a consideration in kitchens, bathrooms and
such; nor do young children find them as convenient as a handle. So, all that would seem to make a compelling case
for the handle but for domestic use, there’s one quirky consideration some may
wish to include when making the choice. While
there are verified cases of cats and dogs learning to open doors using a
handle, no pet has yet been observed mastering the turning of a door knob; while
a rare problem, the chance of one’s cat or dog opening door using a lever is
not zero and, because houses tend to use the same style of lever throughout,
once they have learned to open one door, they’ve really learned to open all. If it’s a concern, the good news is most
doors are adaptable for either so replacing a lever with a knob does not
usually require the door being replaced.
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