Situationism

Situationism (pronounced sich-oo-ey-shuh-niz-uhm)

(1) A fork of Marxist political philosophy, a collection of (often abstract) theories used to build critiques of existing structures.  The overt political project emerged from the merging of a number of politically-minded, mid-twentieth century avant-garde art movement.  

(2) A theory in psychology which holds that personality and behavior is influenced more by external, situational factors than internal traits or motivations.

1955: A compound word: situation + ism.  Situation was from the early fifteenth century Middle English situacioun & situacion (place, position, or location), from Middle French situation, from the Old French situacion, from the Medieval Latin situationem (nominative situatio) (position, situation), the construct being situare (to locate, to place), from situs (a site, a position), thus situate +‎ -ion.  The Latin situs was from the primitive Indo-European root tkei (to settle, dwell, be home).  The meaning "state of affairs" was from 1710, extended specifically by 1803 to mean "a post of employment".  The suffix -ion was from the Middle English -ioun, from the the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  The use in political philosophy technically dates from 1955 (as situation ethics) although its origins can be traced to (at least) the nineteenth-century beginnings of sociology.  It was first seen in applied psychology in 1968 (as situational ethics) with publication of a monograph by Walter Mischel (1930-2018) who in later writings displayed some ambivalence.  Situationism is a noun, situationist is a noun & adjective and situationally is an adverb; the noun plural is situationisms.

The Internationale Situationiste (Situationist International)

Formed in 1957, dissolved in 1972 and eventually more a concept than a movement, the Situationist International (SI) was a trans-European collective of avant-garde artists and political radicals envisaged as a fusion of art & revolutionary activism; although originally a loose structure, it was later noted for its rigidity and its core critique was of modern consumer society, particularly under advanced capitalism. Influenced by criticism that philosophy had tended increasingly to fail at the moment of its actualization, the SI, although it assumed the inevitability of social revolution, always maintained many (cross-cutting) strands of expectations of the form(s) this might take but, just as a world-revolution did not follow the Russian upheavals of 1917, the events of May, 1968 failed to realize the predicted implications; the SI can be said then to have died with the discursive output between 1968-1972 treated either as a lifeless aftermath to an anti-climax or a bunch of bitter intellectuals serving as mourners at their own protracted funeral.

SI art: The Change (1957), paint on hardwood by Ralph Rumney (1934-2002).

The SI’s origins were in the north-western Italian town Cosio di Arroscia where, during a conference, several experimental art movements resolved to merge, the most prominent being (1) the Lettrist International, (2) the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and (3) the London Psychogeographical Association.  Tellingly, although many original members were focused on the imagery of art, the most influential figure was the French theorist Guy Debord (1931-1994) who had in left-wing circles become fashionable after the publication of a number of essays in which he argued modern capitalist societies had become dominated by what he called “spectacle”.  That was the thesis he most fully explored in his most famous work, The Society of the Spectacle (1967) which asserted: (1) social life had become mediated by images, media & commodities, (2) real human relations were being replaced by a passive consumption of representations and (3) individuals increasingly experienced life as spectators rather than participants.  What all this meant was Western society had become a system where appearance (depictions of a “construct of reality” which were simulacrums) had replaced lived experience.

SI Agitprop.

Despite the political slant, when formed, the SI certainly retained an identity as something artistic and although membership was erratic with factional alignments constantly shifting, there always was a strain which valued the art for its intrinsic qualities at least as much as for any utility as propaganda pieces; indeed, it was the notion of art abstracted from some purpose which was the SI's constant fault-line.  Those most influential in the early days of the SI had been much affected by the physical damage suffered by so many European cities during World War II (1939-1945) and especially the possibilities offered by re-building, thus the interest in concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography, essentially a response to the sociological aspects of the re-construction of those cities in the immediate post-war period.

SI propaganda: The Situationist Times 6: International Parisian Edition, Paris, December 1967.

The Situationist Times was an international, English-language periodical created and edited by Dutch artist Jacqueline de Jong (1939–2024), six issues published between 1962-1967.  Envisaged as a radical compendium encompassing Situationist tactics such as détournement and a printed form of dérive, the journals included essays, artwork, “found” images, and fragments of works concerned with such issues as topology, politics, and spectacle culture.  In the anarchist sprit of the collective, Ms De Jong insisted the periodical must be a “completely free magazine, based on the most creative of the Situationist ideas” and what appears on the pages does over the years show traces of the political and aesthetic schisms which would characterize the SI.  As well as the SI’s usual suspects, contributors included the English astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) who (inadvertently) coined the term “big bang” and the French writer Noël Arnaud (pen name of Raymond Valentin Muller (1919- 2003) of the school of pataphysics (one of the late nineteenth century’s more curious alternatives to orthodox science which may (as QAnon seems to have) begun as a joke but took on a life because it so appealed to people who “wanted it to be true”).  With the failures of the Parisian revolutionaries in 1968, SI’s historic moment passed and the seventh edition of The Situationist Times, (The Pinball Issue) remained incomplete and was not published although extracts of the content have appeared.

SI Art: Untitled (Peinture collective situationniste) (1961).

As was done with the SI's “pieces by the collective”, Guy Debord and Jeppesen Victor Martin (1930–1993) signed along with eight other artists; within two years all except Debord and Martin had been expelled so in that sense, no work better illustrates the creative tensions which rent the SI.  Those “cancelled” in some cases regarded their erasure from the SI rolls as a badge of honor and Debord couldn't have them burned at the stake or taken outside and shot (which had over the years been the fate of a few artists who displeased a dictator) so there was that.  

Prior to the formation of the SI, some of what had been written about the form the physical reconstruction of post-war Europe should take had attracted interest from political theorists, especially those in anti-authoritarian Marxist circles who would come to position themselves as the inheritors of western political liberalism, notably the Lettrist International (formed in 1952).  In the way the European left did things in the early post-war years, the SI was conceived as an even more radical collective movement which wholly would renounce any connection with high-art and deal instead with the functional business of psychogeography, dissolving rather than exploring the boundaries between life and art.  However, whatever might have been the purity of the founders' intentions, because what the SI produced was eye-catchingly visual, it attracted practitioners in many fields of art and an audience which enjoyed the supposedly subversive pieces as just another spectacle.  That was tribute to the striking posters but wasn’t something which best pleased the uncompromising activists who viewed art merely as something with a revolutionary political purpose; factions formed and any commonality of interest between the utilitarians and the artists proved insufficiently strong to maintain the SI as a unified movement.  From formation to extinction, inherently it was fissiparous although, while members could be kicked out of the SI, it didn't mean their work ceased and the Scandinavian Drakabygget group (noted for the memorably titled Journal for art against atomic bombs, popes and politicians) essentially ignored their expulsion and continued to exhibit and publish in the Situationists vein.

SI art: Industrial Painting (1958), monoprinted oil paint, acrylic paint & typographic ink on canvas by Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio (1902–1964).

Unrolled from a wooden spool and extending just over 75 metres (246 feet) Industrial Painting was one of a series of abstract works Pinot-Gallizio painted in this mode.  Unspooling in a swirl of blotches of colors, the idea was to recall the vibrancy of figures moving along a city’s streets and a deliberate limitation of the design was only some 9 metres (30 feet) could be displayed at one time, the idea being to emulate a journey in which much of what’s just been seen fades or vanishes from memory as the traveller proceeds along their path.  In an indication of the way the SI worked in an industrial age, Pinot-Gallizio made these works on his “painting machine” which he built with mechanical rollers attached to a long table.  What emerged was, in contrast to most of what came from “conveyor-belt” mass production, chaotic and wholly unique.

Modern situationist; modern spectacle: French content creator & author Léna Situations (Léna Mahfouf, b 1997), in Georges Hobeika (b 1962) black gown with inverted V-neckline (technically a wedge), Academy Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, March 2026.

Ms Mahfouf uses “Léna Situations” as an online pseudonym because that was the name of the fashion & lifestyle-focused blog she, as a teen-ager, created in 2012; it gained her a “brand identity” and was thus for some purposes retained in adulthood.  The blog would have seemed familiar to the members of the SI because her concept was sharing fragments of her life in different “situations” which might be defined by the place, the outfit worn or what was being experienced so was thus a series of spectacles, able to be understood as fragmentary relics of time & place or a series of narratives.  Using that model, platforms like Instagram have allowed just about everybody to become a situationist and while Debord didn’t live to see such things, he’d have recognized (if not approved) “social lives mediated by images, media & commodities”.

Charli XCX (stage-name of English singer-songwriter Charlotte Emma Aitchison (b 1992)) in a Christopher John Rogers (b 1993) white fit & flare dress with ruffled peplum, featuring a more conventional implementation of the V-neckline.

Ms Mahfouf's retention of a youthful online pseudonym is not unique, Charli XCX another example.  The star herself revealed the stage name is pronounced chahr-lee ex-cee-ex; it has no connection with Roman numerals and XCX is anyway not a standard Roman number.  XC is “90” (C minus X (100-10)) and CX is “110” (C plus X (100 +10)) but, should the need arise, XCX could be used as a code for “100”, on the model of something like the “May 35th” reference Chinese internet users, when speaking of the “Tiananmen Square Incident” of 4 June 1989, adopted in an attempt to circumvent the CCP's (Chinese Communist Party) “Great Firewall of China” censorship apparatus.  In 2015, Ms XCX revealed the text string was an element in her MSN screen name (CharliXCX92) when young (it stood for “kiss Charli kiss”) and, after appearing in the early publicity for her music, it gained critical mass so Charli XCX we still have.

SI art: Lettre à mon fils (Letter to my son, 1956-1957), oil on canvas by Asger Jorn (1914-1973).

What quickly coalesced as the core of situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle, an explanation of the mechanism of advanced capitalism’s modern tendency towards expression and mediation of social relations through objects and for structuralists it was a compelling model.  It was beyond a critique of materialism and might have been more effective had the SI been able to resist using the increasingly layered and complex language of the mid-twentieth century Marxist discourse, a sub-set of language which would come to delight academic deconstructionists but often baffled others.  As well as Debord’s writings, Belgium philosopher Raoul Vaneigem’s (b 1934) The Revolution of Everyday Life (1968) was a seminal work; in the riots of 1968, both proved influential, less as entire texts than as sources for the epigrammatic and graffiti-friendly phrases (Sous les pavés, la plage! (Under the paving stones, the beach!), L’ennui est contre-révolutionnaire (Boredom is counter-revolutionary) and Ne travaillez jamais (Never work!) among the most replicated) which appeared all over French cities during the uprising.  In that, the SI thus proved the primacy of objects in social relations (whether hegemonic or not) although the SI generally held that “situationism” was a meaningless term, a position necessitated by their inherent rejection of ideologies, all of which they dismissed either as useless utopian myths or constructed superstructures existing only to create the social controls required to serve the economic interests of a ruling elite.  Much of the history of the SI was one faction rejecting another; indeed, the SI’s transition from artistic to political movement was less organic than disruptive.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

The critique of the consumer society resonated strongly with student radicals who were the failed revolutionaries of 1968 but, remarkably for a crew which was so influential on mass-movements, the SI was always tiny (it wasn’t untypical for there to be fewer than two-dozen active members) with internal conflicts and expulsions common, Debord given frequently to banishing members he believed had compromised the group’s revolutionary aims, the worst sin of heretics apparently the creation of art which shocked by virtual of its appearance but did nothing to in anyway transform society; comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) might have called such transgressors “formalists”.  Neglected for decades, the concepts developed by the SI attracted renewed interest in the social media age as much of what they’d described suddenly seemed familiar.  Key SI concepts included (1) psychogeography (the study of how urban environments affect emotions and behaviour, (2) dérive (drift) in which a wander through a city was documented with illustrative images, (3) détournement (appropriating using existing cultural elements (advertisements, comics, artworks etc) and, in subversive ways, repurposing them to undermine their original ideological message) and (4) constructed situations which were “moments of life” (events, environments, experiences) created for no purpose other than breaking the passivity of everyday existence.  If all that sounds something like what may have appeared in the check-list used by the designers of Instagram, TikTok and such, it hints (1) the SI may have been onto something and (2) as US billionaire investor Warren Buffett (b 1930) put it when explaining the outcome of class warfare: “We won”.

A requiem for the SI: No Title (1975-1976), lithograph on paper by Constant Niewwenhuys (1920-2005).

Debord no more wanted the SI to be what would come to be called a “think tank” any more than he wanted an artist’s colony but certainly envisaged it as a theoretical vanguard rather than a conventional political organization, his view being that even if created as something “revolutionary”, such movements tended to be “captured” (ie absorbed into the very system they were created to subvert or at least oppose).  That was why the orthodox SI position was not to exhibit their works in galleries or museums because, in the spirit of Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) notion “the medium is the message”, once radical art was hung in such places, it became merely another commodity in the “spectacle”, dissenters accused of “recuperation” (a SI concept in which radical ideas had been neutralized and absorbed by mainstream culture).  So, members who were judged to have misunderstood or diluted Situationist orthodoxy (ie disagreed with Debord) were expelled, the rationale being what was valued in adherents was “quality rather than quantity”.  Although supposedly in the tradition of Marxist collective decision-making, Debord exercised extraordinary informal authority within the SI (despite the group officially rejecting hierarchy) and in practice, personally defined the SI’s theoretical parameters.  In a nice touch which would be familiar in places like the Soviet Union, the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)) or the modern Republican Party’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) faction, the “culture of exclusion” was ritualized in the journal Internationale Situationniste which regularly would publish lists of those un-personed (including the reasons), the former members denounced in harsh language, the worst insults including accusations of “theoretical confusion” and the practicing of mere “pseudo-Situationism”; by the time of dissolution in 1972, the membership consisted of Debord and one remaining loyal soul.  The SI, at least in the more reductionist works, did create some genuinely interesting critiques of the post-war West and some of the early art was, if not exactly novel, certainly stark and compelling.  However, it remains hard to identify enough ideas to justify the volume of text produced and phrasing it in what was surely deliberately difficult language does suggest there was an attempt to conceal the repetition of thought.

Knob

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.

Yorkeys Knob, Cairns, Queensland, Australia.

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”.

Gay men supporting lesbians at the first “Dyke March”, Washington DC, April 1993.  The sign held by the protester at the far left uses the compound word for which the euphemisms “knob polisher” & “knob-gobbler” were coined.

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.

Interior of Porsche 917K with cool (in both senses of the word) balsa-wood shift knob.  The obviously "fake" passenger bucket seat was installed to comply with the rules in sports car racing.

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.

1959 Ford Fairlane Galaxie 500 Sunliner with suicide knob (on steering wheel at 10 o'clock).

“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.”

A young lady wrapping practiced fingers around the timber shift knob in 1970 Maserati Indy (Tipo 116, 1969-1975).  In the era, it was fashionable in Italian exotica for the knob and steering wheel rim to match (ie in leather or wood).

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 180^o), 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.

1962 Maserati 3500 GTi.  Some Maserati 3500 GTs (Tipo 101, 1957-1964) had the unusual feature of having front and rear quarter-vents fitted to the same door; they were opened and closed using knurled, stainless steel knobs.

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.

A Hurst Jaws of Life used between 1977-2012 by the fire department in Carlsbad, New Mexico, now on display at the National Museum of American History.

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.

A butter curler producing curls.  Generally, the curlers come in large and small, respectively producing a curl notionally equivalent to a dollop or a knob (half-dollop).  In the kitchen however, knobs and dollops are what the chef decides they are.

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 it 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.