Facsimile

Facsimile (pronounced fak-sim-uh-lee)

(1) An exact copy of something (most typically a book, painting, or manuscript).

(2) In telecommunications a method, protocol collection or device (ie the “fax” or “fax machine”) for transmitting data which exists in printed form (typically text documents, drawings, photographs et al) by means of radio or telephone for exact reproduction on a compatible device in another place; expressed usually as the clipping “fax”.

(4) An image transmitted by such a method (historically always in paper hard-copy but technically can be a digital file (e-Fax and similar systems).

(4) To reproduce in facsimile; make a facsimile of something (also as a modifier as in facsimile publication or facsimile transmission).

1655–1665: From the earlier fac simile! (make something like it!), the construct being the Latin fac (imperative of facere (to make; to render) (from the primitive Indo-European root dhe- (to set, put in place)) + simile, noun use of the neuter of similis (alike; similar).  In the English-speaking world, the one-word form was almost universal by the early twentieth century; that always used for the adjective which dates from 1877.  In the modern way, other languages tended to use “fax” unaltered from English use as the technology was adopted.  One exception was French where the older form fac-similé (plural fac-similés) was officially preferred even to facsimilé but even there the monosyllabic “fax” usually prevailed.  Facsimile (like fax) is a noun, verb & adjective, facsimiled (or facsimiled) & facsimileing (or facsimiling) are verbs (again, more familiar as faxed & faxing); the noun plural is either facsimiles or facsimilia (and of fax it is faxes).

There are a remarkable number of synonyms for facsimile (in the sense of copy) including copy, carbon copy, likeness, replica, clone, copy, ditto, double, dupe, duplicate, look-alike, mimeo, mirror, print, reduplication, replication & ringer (even “miniature” was often used and understood in context) but such was the influence of the fax machine that for other purposes “facsimile” tends now to be used only in historic reference.  One example of appropriate use was the celebration in 1943 of the 50^th birthday of Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany 1938-1945), the highlight of which was a presentation to the minister of a diamond-studded casket containing facsimiles of all the treaties he had signed during (his admittedly busy if not productive) tenure.  When one of his aides remarked that there were only “a few treaties we had not broken”, Ribbentrop was briefly uncertain how to react until he saw “…Hitler’s eyes filled with tears of laughter”.  It was said to be a good party.  The casual dismissiveness towards treaties was shared by most of the Nazi regime, Hermann Göring (1893–1946; prominent Nazi 1923-1945 & Reichsmarschall of Germany 1940-1975) cheerfully gloating when under cross-examination during the Nuremburg Trial (1945-1946) that he regarded treaties as “…just so much toilet paper”.  Like Ribbentrop, he was convicted on all four counts and (planning aggressive war, waging aggressive war, war crimes & crimes against humanity) and sentenced to be hanged.

Facsimile copy of the secret protocol to the Ribbentrop-Molotov (Nazi-Soviet) Pact, signed in Moscow 23 August 1939.

The protocol defined (1) the parameters of the two countries respective spheres of interest in parts of Europe, (2) the actual borders of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania) and (3) the division of Poland.  In the case of Poland, the line of demarcation was essentially the same as the Curzon Line, drawn in 1919 by the UK's foreign secretary Lord Curzon (1859–1925), something which in discussions towards the end of World War II (1939-1645) would cause some embarrassment to British negotiators.

Fax machines are unfashionable though not quite extinct.  For most users, most of the time, the alternatives are better but fax across phone lines did have some real advantages, the most obvious being security; it was just about impossible to intercept a tax message unless one was able physically to tap into the physical copper wires attaching the send & receive devices to the telephone network.  There was also something pleasingly democratic about fax, the low transmission speed (the default for years was 14.4 kbit/s although support for the V34 standard (28.8 & 33.6) became common and digital modems even ran over ISDN at 64 kbit/s) meant just about everyone on the telephone network ran at about the same rate.  Sometimes too, legislation for a while cemented the fax’s place in communications, banks and the real estate industry long fond of the fax because a signature transmitted thus was accepted as evidence in matters of contract law while the electronic version was not (and with good reason).  Cultural factors too made a difference.  Long after their receptionists had switched to using computers and thus eMail and other forms of communications, medical practitioners seemed to be creatures of habit and thought if something wasn’t a fax then it wasn’t real.

Lindsay Lohan, faxed.

Fax as short form of facsimile was wholly unrelated to the original fax which was from the Middle English fax, from the Old English feax (hair, head of hair), from the Proto-West Germanic fahs, from the Proto-Germanic fahsą (hair, mane), from the primitive Indo-European poḱsom (hair (literally “that which is combed, shorn, or plucked”)), from the primitive Indo-European peḱ- (to comb, shear, pluck).  It was cognate with the Dutch vas (headhair), the German Fachs (head-hai”), the Norwegian faks (mane), the Icelandic fax (mane) and the Sanskrit पक्ष्मन् (pákṣman) (eyelash, hair, filament).  The Latin fax (torch, firebrand; fireball, comet; cause of ruin, incitement), from the primitive Indo-European ǵhwehk- (to shine) and cognate with facētus (elegant, fine; courteous, polite; witty, jocose, facetious) and the Lithuanian žvakė (candle) and there’s also a speculative link to the Etruscan word for face (which may also have meant torch).  In English (and apparently Scottish) dialectal use it used to mean “hair of the head” until the late fifteenth century.  The first recorded use as a clipping of facsimile (or in some countries “telefax”) to describe the consumer level telecommunications technology, its output and use is thought to date from 1979 but use as an oral form may slightly have predated this.  However, as a noun, “fax” had been in use by telegraphy engineers since 1948 and the verb in this context dates from at least 1970 although, in oral use it could have a longer history.

Brother FAX1820C fax machine.

Adding to the obsolescence was the switch in many countries away from the sometimes century-old analogue network of copper wires to a digital system, something which was the death knell of many fax machines.  In corporations, where internal PBXs (private branch exchange (also PABX (private automated branch exchange)), had usually provided a translation layer which provided both analogue and digital lines, the fax machines (usually as one of the components of a MFD (multi-function device which handled photocopying, faxing, scanning, OCR (optical character recognition) and sometimes even storage) carried serenely on although the evidence suggested use had diminished sometimes to zero.  Even in homes and small businesses without a PBX, adaptors are available which link a fax machine to a SIP/VoIP (Session Initiation Protocol/Voice over Internet Protocol) account, emulating the analogue original.  Unlike the old and robust telephone system, reliability could be patchy because the performance of the internet tends to bounce around more and (strangely) error correction is a less exact science.  There are more sophisticated solutions but they don’t use existing hardware so costs are higher and the take-up rate has been low, reflecting that most e-mail or other messaging solutions cover the needs of most users at zero or marginal cost.

The Imperial fax machine that never was

In the two decades between 1955-1975 when Chrysler in the US ran Imperial as a separate division rather than a badge to be used for up-market versions built on the corporate full-sized platform (although Imperials in their last generations did revert to such engineering), despite the odd encouraging season, the brand never threatened the dominance of Cadillac in the sector and rarely troubled Ford's Lincoln, the perennial runner-up.  The 1967 & 1968 Imperial range did however offer something truly unique.  The “Mobile Director Package” was available exclusively on the Imperial Crown Coupe and reflected (within the limits of what the available technology and fiscal realism would then permit) what Chrysler thought a company director would most value in an automobile being used as a kind of “office on the move” and it included: an extendable walnut-topped table which could be unfolded over the rear seats, a gooseneck (Tensor brand) high-intensity lamp which could be plugged into the cigarette lighter on either side of the car (in a sign of the times, Imperials had four cigarette lighters installed) and most intriguingly, the front passenger seat could rotate 180° to permit someone comfortably to use the tables and interact with those in the rear.  Unfortunately, the fax machine previewed on the well-publicized prototype didn't make the cut for the production version.  All the publicity material associated with the Mobile Director Package did suggest the rearward-facing seat would likely be occupied by a director’s secretary and as one might imagine, the configuration did preclude her (and those depicted were usually women) using a lap & sash seat-belt but she would always have been in arm’s reach of at least one cigarette lighter so there was that.  The package was available only for those two seasons and in its first years cost US$597.40 (some US$5500 adjusted for 2023 values).  The cost of the option was in 1968 reduced to US$317.60 (some US$2800 adjusted for 2023 values) but that did little to stimulate demand, only 81 buyers of Crown Coupes ticking the box so even if the new safety regulations hadn’t outlawed the idea, it’s doubtful the Mobile Director Package would have appeared on the option list in 1969 when the new (and ultimately doomed) “fuselage” Imperials debuted.

Imperial's advertising always emphasised the "business" aspect of the package but the corporation also circulated a photograph of the table supporting a (presumably magnetic) chessboard and another with a bunch of grapes tumbling seductively.  The latter may have been to suggest the utility of the package when stopping for a picnic with one's secretary.  Once advertising agencies got ideas, they were hard to restrain.    

The advertising copy at the time claimed the package was “designed for the busy executive who must continue his work while he travels”, serving also as “an informal conference lounge”.  The Imperial was a big car (although the previous generations were larger still) but “lounge” was a bit of a stretch but “truth in advertising” laws were then not quite as onerous as they would become.  More accurate were the engineering details, the table able to “pivot to any of four different positions, supported by a sturdy chrome-plated pillar and in the forward position, it can convert into a padded armrest between the two front seats while extended, it opens out to twice its original size with a lever on the table swivel support to permit adjustments to the height”.  It was noted “a special tool is used for removing the table and storing it in the trunk” the unstated implication presumably that in deference to the secretary’s finger-nails, that would be a task for one’s chauffeur.  The US$597.40 the option listed at in 1967 needs to be compared with the others available and only the most elaborate of the air conditioning systems was more expensive.

Imperial option list, 1967.

The package as it appeared in showrooms was actually modest compared with the “Mobile Executive” car the corporation sent around the show circuit in 1966.  That Imperial had been fitted with a telephone, Dictaphone, writing table, typewriter, television, a fax machine, reading lamp and stereophonic sound system.  The 1966 show car was also Crown Coupe but it was much more ambitious, anticipating advances in mobile communications which would unfold over the next quarter century.  At the time, car phones were available (the first service in the US offered during the late 1940s) although they were expensive and the nature of the bandwidth used and the lack of data compression meant that the range was limited as was the capacity; only several dozen calls able simultaneously to be sustained.  In 1966, there was even the novelty of a Datafax, a "facsimile machine" (later to become the ubiquitous "fax") able to send or receive a US Letter-sized (slightly smaller than A4) page of text in six minutes.  That sounds unimpressive in 2023 (or compared even with the 14.4 kbit/s for Group 3 FaxStream services of the 1990s) but the appropriate comparison is with the contemporary alternatives (driving, walking or using the US Mail) and six minutes would have been a considerable advance.  As it was, the tempting equipment awaited improvements in infrastructure such as the analogue networks of the 1980s and later cellular roll-outs and these technologies contributed to the extent of use which delivered the economies of scale which eventually would make possible smart phones.

The 1966 car which toured the show circuit demonstrated the concept which, in simplified form, would the next year appear on the option list but things like telephones and fax machines anticipated the future by many years (although fax machines in cars (Audi one of a handful to offer them) never became a thing).  The Dictaphone did however make the list as one of Chrysler's regular production options (RPO) in the early 1970s and the take-up rate was surprisingly high although the fad quickly passed, dealers reporting the customers saying they worked well but they "never used them".

Simile, Metaphor & Analogy

Simile (pronounced sim-uh-lee)

(1) A figure of speech expressing the resemblance of one thing to another of a different category usually introduced by as or like.

(2) An instance of such a figure of speech or a use of words exemplifying it.

1393: From the Middle English simile, from the Latin simile (a like thing; a comparison, likeness, parallel), neuter of similis (like, resembling, of the same kind).  The antonym is dissimile and the plural similes or similia although the latter, the original Latin form, is now so rare its use would probably only confuse.  Apart from its use as a literary device, the word was one most familiar as the source of the “fax” machine, originally the telefacsimile and there was a “radio facsimile” service as early as the 1920s whereby images could be transmitted over long-distance using radio waves, the early adopters newspapers and the military.

The simile is figure of speech in which one thing is explicitly compared to another, usually using “like” or “as”; both things must be mentioned and the comparison directly stated.  For literary effect, the two things compared should be thought so different as to not usually appear in the same sentence and the comparison must directly be stated.  Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)) thought a simile “…to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject." but many long ago became clichéd and far removed from nobility.

It went through me like an armor-piercing shell.
Slept like a log.
Storm in a tea cup.
Blind as a bat.
Dead as a dodo.
Deaf as a post.

Metaphor (pronounced met-uh-fawr)

(1) A figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance.

(2) Something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.

1525-1535:  From the Middle French métaphore & the (thirteenth century) Old French metafore from the Latin metaphora, from the Ancient Greek μεταφορά (metaphorá) (a transfer, especially of the sense of one word to a different word; literally "a carrying over”), from μεταφέρω (metaphérō) (I transfer; I apply; I carry over; change, alter; to use a word in a strange sense), the construct being μετά (metá) (with; across; after; over) + φέρω (phérō, pherein) (to carry, bear) from the primitive Indo-European root bher- (to carry; to bear children).  The plural was methaphoris.  In Antiquity, for a writer to be described in Greek as metaphorikos meant they were "apt at metaphors”, a skill highly regarded: “It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of the poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words. But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars" (Aristotle (384-322 BC), Poetics (circa 335 BC)).

The words metaphor, simile and analogy are often used interchangeably and, at the margins, there is a bit of overlap, a simile being a type of metaphor but the distinctions exist.  A metaphor is a figure of figure of speech by which a characteristic of one object is assigned to another, different but resembling it or analogous to it; comparison by transference of a descriptive word or phrase.  It’s important to note a metaphor is technically not an element or argument, merely a device to make a point more effective or better understood.  It’s the use of a word or phrase to refer to something other than its literal meaning, invoking an implicit similarity between the thing described and what is denoted by the word or phrase.  It has certain technical uses too such as the recycling or trashcan icons in the graphical user interfaces (GUI) on computer desktops (a metaphor in itself).  The most commonly used derivatives are metaphorically & metaphorical but in literary criticism and the weird world of deconstructionism, there’s the dead metaphor, the extended metaphor, the metaphorical extension, the mysterious conceptual metaphor and the odd references to metaphoricians and their metaphorization.  Within the discipline, the sub-field of categorization is metaphorology, the body of work of those who metaphorize.  

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Richard II (circa 1594), Act 2 scene 1.

Analogy (pronounced uh-nal-uh-jee)

(1) A similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based:

(2) A similarity or comparability.

(3) In biology, an analogous relationship; a relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations, people, or objects, especially when used as a basis for explanation or extrapolation.

(4) In linguistics, the process by which words or phrases are created or re-formed according to existing patterns in the language.

(5) In logic a form of reasoning in which one thing is inferred to be similar to another thing in a certain respect, on the basis of the known similarity between the things in other respects.

(6) In geometry, the proportion or the equality of ratios.

(7) In grammar, the correspondence of a word or phrase with the genius of a language, as learned from the manner in which its words and phrases are ordinarily formed; similarity of derivative or inflectional processes.

1530-1540: From the Old French analogie, from the Latin analogia, from the Ancient Greek ἀναλογία (analogía), (ratio or proportion) the construct being ἀνά (aná) (upon; according to) + λόγος (logos) (ratio; word; speech, reckoning), from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, to gather (with derivatives meaning “to speak; to pick out words”).  It was originally a term from mathematics given a wider sense by Plato who extended it to logic (which became essentially “an argument from the similarity of things in some ways inferring their similarity in others”.  The meaning “partial agreement, likeness or proportion between things” fates from the 1540s and by the 1580s was common in mathematics; by the early seventeenth century it was in general English use.  The plural is analogies and the derived forms include the adjective analogical and the verbs analogize & analogized.  In critical discourse there’s the “false analogy” and the rare disanalogy.

An analogy is a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to another thing that is quite different from it, aiming to explain the idea or thing by comparing it to something that is familiar.  Further to confuse, metaphors and similes are tools used to draw an analogy so an analogy can be more extensive and elaborate than either a simile or a metaphor.

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), The Day Is Done (1844).

“They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water.”

George Orwell (1903-1950), A Hanging (1931).

The Mean Girls mall scene, at the water hole in the jungle clearing where the “animals gather when on heat”.

Similes, metaphors & analogies are used frequently as devices in fiction including in Paramount Production’s Mean Girls (2004) and the similes were quite brutish including “You smell like a baby prostitute”; “She's like a Martian”; & “Your face smells like peppermint”.  The metaphors were obvious (this was a teen comedy) but worked well.  The “Plastics” implied the notion of things artificial, superficial, and shiny on the outside but hollow inside while “Social Suicide” would to the audience have been more familiar still.  The idea of the “Queen Bee” (a metaphorical position of one individual as the centre of the hive (school) around which all dynamics and activities revolve) was one of several zoological references.  The idea of it being “…like a jungle in here” was a variation of the familiar metaphorical device of comparing modern urban environments (the “concrete jungle” the best known) with a jungle and in Mean Girls stylized depictions of wild animals do appear, the school’s mascot a lion, a link to the protagonist having come from the African savanna.  There was also the use of a malapropism in the analogy “It's like I have ESPN or something”, the novelty being it used an incorrect abbreviation rather than a word.  The Mean Girls script is not the place to search for literary subtleties.

Of Pluto

The New Zealand physicist Lord Rutherford (1871-1937), who first split the atom (1932), explained its structure by drawing an analogy with our solar system.  Rutherford always regarded physics as the “only true, pure science” while other disciplines were just expressions of the properties or applications of the theories of physics.  In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “…for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances.”  It was said he was amused by the joke.

This image includes Pluto as a planet.  Historically, the Galileian satellites of Jupiter were initially called satellite planets but were later reclassified along with the Moon.  The first observed asteroids were also considered planets, but were reclassified when became apparent how many there were, crossing each other's orbits, in a zone where only a single planet had been expected.   Pluto was found where an outer planet had been expected but doubts were soon raised about its status because (1) it was found to cross Neptune's orbit and (2) was much smaller than had been the expectation.  The debate about the status of Pluto went on for decades after its discovery in 1930 and the pro-planet faction may have become complacent, thinking that because Pluto had always been a planet, it would forever be thus but, after seventy-six years in the textbooks as a planet, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006 voted to re-classify Pluto as a dwarf planet on the basis that the icy orb failed to meet a set of criteria which the IAU claimed had for decades been accepted science.

To be a planet, the IAU noted, the body must (1) orbit a star, (2) be sufficiently massive to it pull itself into a sphere under its own gravity and (3), “clear its neighbourhood” of debris and other celestial bodies, proving it has gravitational dominance (cosmic hegemony in its sphere of influence by political analogy) in its little bit of the solar system.  Pluto fails the third test.  Because it orbits in the Kuiper Belt (a massive ring of asteroids and planetoids that stretches beyond the orbit of Neptune), Pluto is surrounded by thousands of other celestial bodies and chunks of debris, each exerting its own gravity.  Pluto is thus not the gravitationally dominant object in its neighborhood and therefore, not a planet and but a dwarf (a sort of better class of asteroid).  The IAU’s action had been prompted by the discovery in the Kuiper Belt of a body larger than Pluto yet still not meeting the criteria for planethood.  Feeling the need to draw a line in the sky, the IAU dumped Pluto.

However #plutoisaplanet is a thing and Pluto’s supporters have a website, arguing that while it’s universally accepted a planet should be spherical and orbit the Sun, the “clearing the neighbourhood” rule is arbitrary, having appeared only in a single paper published in 1801.  The history is certainly muddied, Galileo having described the moons of Jupiter as planets and there are plenty of other more recent precedents to suggest the definitional consensus has bounced around a bit and there are even extremists really to accept the implications of loosening the rules such as the moons of Earth, Jupiter and Saturn becoming planets.  Most however just want Pluto restored.

The most compelling argument however is that the IAU are a bunch of humorless cosmological clerks, something like the Vogons (“…not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.”) in Douglas Adams' (1952–2001) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979-1992) and that Pluto should be restored to planethood because of the romance of the tale.  Although lacking the lovely rings of Saturn (a feature shared on a smaller scale by Jupiter, Uranus & Neptune), Pluto is the most charming of all because it’s so far away; desolate, lonely and cold, it's the solar system’s emo.  If for no other reason, it should be a planet in tribute to the scientists who, for decades during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, calculated possible positions and hunted for the elusive orb.  In an example of Donald Rumsfeld's (1932–2021; US secretary of defense 1975-1977 & 2001-2006) “unknown knowns”, the proof was actually obtained as early as 1915 but it wasn’t until 1930 that was realized.  In an indication of just how far away Pluto lies, since the 1840s when equations based on Newtonian mechanics were first used to predict the position of the then “undiscovered” planet, it has yet to complete even one orbit of the Sun, one Plutonian year being 247.68 years long.

Hotline

Hotline (pronounced hot-lahyn)

(1) In Canadian use, talkback radio; of or relating to a radio program that receives telephone calls from listeners while on-air.

(2) A direct telecommunications link, either as a telephone line, teletype circuit or other connection, enabling immediate communication between heads of state and intended for use in times of crisis.

(3) A telephone service enabling people confidentially to speak with someone about a personal problem or crisis.

(4) A telephone line providing customers or clients with direct access to a company or professional service.

1950-1955: Hot was from the Middle English hot & hat, from the Old English hāt (hot, fervent, fervid, fierce), from the Proto-Germanic haitaz (hot), from the primitive Indo-European kay- (hot; to heat).  It was cognate with the Scots hate & hait (hot), the North Frisian hiet (hot), the Saterland Frisian heet (hot), the West Frisian hjit (hot), the Dutch heet (hot), the Low German het (hot), the German & Low German heet (hot), the German heiß (hot), the Danish hed (hot), the Swedish het (hot) and the Icelandic heitur (hot).  Line was from the Middle English line & lyne, from the Old English līne (line, cable, rope, hawser, series, row, rule, direction), from the Proto-West Germanic līnā, from the Proto-Germanic līnǭ (line, rope, flaxen cord, thread), from the Proto-Germanic līną (flax, linen), from the primitive Indo-European līno- (flax).  The Middle English forms evolved under the influence of the Middle French ligne (line), from the Latin linea and the oldest sense of the word is "rope, cord, thread"; from this the senses "path" and "continuous mark" were derived.  That was also the source of the use in telecommunications, telephone traffic originally routed along physical lines, usually a pair of copper wires; the use of “cable” “telegraph” & “wire” to describe the messages sent across these means of transmission had a similar gestation.  The spelling variously is hotline, hot-line and hot line and inconsistencies in use are common.

The Moscow–Washington hotline

President Warren Harding with the first telephone installed in the Oval Office, 29 March 1929.

The Moscow–Washington hotline (technically the Washington–Moscow Direct Communications Link) was established in 1963 after the experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis suggested to US diplomats that had the channels of communication been able more quickly to deliver messages, it may have been possible to resolve matters before they reached to point of crisis.  The solution was felt to be a means of immediate, secure communication between the Kremlin and the White House so the leaders of the USSR and USA instantly could communicate in times of crisis, the imagery being two telephones connected by a long line between Moscow and Washington DC.  Unfortunately, although the classic image is of red analogue telephones (without a dialing mechanism) sitting on the two desks, telephones actually weren’t part of the system.  There has been a telephone on the president’s desk in the White House since 1929 but never a red one and although there have been many red-colored phones in both civilian and military service in the US, there was never one connected to the Moscow–Washington hotline.

The photograph of George W Bush was a fake although it circulated widely, complete with a doctored photo-frame in the background, containing a picture of then UK prime-minister Tony Blair. 

The classic hotline was between two callers but there's no reason why they can't be multi-node: Four-way call, Mean Girls (2004).

The reasons telephones weren’t thought suitable was that in moments of crisis in international relations, it’s vital there be no misunderstandings and a conversation between two people speaking different languages through translators, separated by thousands of miles over a phone line of sometimes variable quality, would be inherently error-prone.  Additionally, a certainty of historic record in important in diplomatic discourse so a device which committed everything to paper, in text, was required.  What was adopted was the technology which was at the time the most appropriate, something robust, reliable and suitable for technicians at both ends; in 1963, that was the teleprinter (also known as teletypewriter, teletype or TTY), an electromechanical device which had for decades been used in inter-continental communications, much of its popularity due to the ability to bolt it to a variety of communications channels.  Over the years, the technology has changed to take advantage of advances including an era (which began during the Reagan administration (1981-1989)) in which the hotline was facsimile (fax) based, something which sounds now archaic but which was at the time both fast and secure.  Satellite links have for years been used and there is now a secure fibre-optic link.   

Hotline Teleprinter, the Pentagon, circa 1966.

Before the term hotline came into use in the 1950s, there had actually been a “hotline” which really did use telephones: In 1943, the first use of a scrambler (an early, analogue form of voice-encryption) was the system installed between the White House Downing Street to render secure conversations between President Roosevelt and Prime-Minister Churchill and both the UK military and civil service had for years used hotlines (literally dedicated phone-lines) between departments.  The idea has spread and other countries have either installed hotlines or at least flirted with the idea although, the implementation has been patchy; some installed and never commissioned or switched off during periods of heightened tensions.  The usual suspects have been involved, China–USSR (and later Russia), China-India, China–United States, China-Japan, North Korea-South Korea and India–Pakistan.

A fake Hotline.

One linguistic quirk in the name of the Moscow–Washington hotline is misleading in that while the Russian end does terminate in Moscow, the US end is technically not in Washington DC but under military control in a secure facility in the Pentagon, located in Langley, Virginia where, twenty-four hours a day, a technician and translator attend the office.  Despite reality, in many fictional depictions of US-Soviet relations in the Cold War and beyond, literal, bright-red analogue telephones sometimes appeared, long after any such devices had been replaced, an example of the way in which verisimilitude in fiction is constructed sometimes by conforming to a popular perception of reality rather than reality itself.

Four-node hotline, Mean Girls (2004).

Simulacrum

Simulacrum (pronounced sim-yuh-ley-kruhm)

(1) A slight, unreal, or superficial likeness or semblance; a physical image or representation of a deity, person, or thing.

(2) An effigy, image, or representation; a thing which has the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities; a thing which simulates another thing; an imitation, a semblance; a thing which has a similarity to the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities

(3) Used loosely, any representational image of something (a nod to the Latin source).

1590–1600: A learned borrowing of the Latin simulācrum (likeness, image) and a dissimilation of simulaclom, the construct being simulā(re) (to pretend, to imitate), + -crum (the instrumental suffix which was a variant of -culum, from the primitive Indo-European –tlom (a suffix forming instrument nouns).  The Latin simulāre was the present active infinitive of simulō (to represent, simulate) from similis (similar to; alike), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European sem- (one; together).  In English, the idea was always of “something having the mere appearance of another”, hence the conveyed notion of a “a specious imitation”, the predominant sense early in the nineteenth century while later it would be applied to works or art (most notably in portraiture) judged, “blatant flattery”.  In English, simulacrum replaced the late fourteenth century semulacre which had come from the Old French simulacre.  As well as the English simulacrum, the descendents from the Latin simulācrum include the French simulacre, the Spanish simulacro and the Polish symulakrum.  Simulacrum is a noun and simulacral is an adjective; the noun plural is simulacrums or simulacra (a learned borrowing from Latin simulācra).  Although neither is listed, by lexicographers, in the world of art criticism, simulacrally would be a tempting adverb and simulacrumism an obvious noun.  The comparative is more simulacral, the suplerative most simulacral.

Simulacrum had an untroubled etymology didn’t cause a problem until French post-structuralists found a way to add layers of complication.  The sociologist & philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) wrote a typically dense paper (The Precession of Simulacra (1981)) explaining simulacra were “…something that replaces reality with its representation… Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real.” and his examples ranged from Disneyland to the Watergate scandal.  One can see his point but it seems only to state the obvious and wicked types like Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) said it in fewer words.  To be fair, Baudrillard’s point was more about the consequences of simulacra than the process of their creation and the social, political and economic implication of states or (more to the point) corporations attaining the means to “replace” reality with a constructed representation were profound.  The idea has become more relevant (and certainly more discussed) in the post-fake news world in which clear distinctions between that which is real and its imitations have become blurred and there’s an understanding that through many channels of distribution, increasingly, audiences are coming to assume nothing is real.

Advertising copy for the 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (left) with graphical art by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman (1918-1995) and a (real) 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (right) fitted with Pontiac's much admired 8-lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the brake drum.

The work of Fitzpatrick & Kaufman is the best remembered of the 1960s advertising by the US auto industry and their finest creations were those for General Motors’ (GM) Pontiac Motor Division (PMD).  The pair rendered memorable images but certainly took some artistic licence and created what were even then admired as simulacrums rather than taken too literally.  While PMD’s “Year of the Wide-Track” (introduced in 1959) is remembered as a slogan, it wasn’t just advertising shtick, the decision taken to increase the track of Pontiacs by 5 inches (125 mm) because the 1958 frames were used for the much wider 1959 bodies, rushed into production because the sleek new Chryslers had rendered the old look frumpy and suddenly old-fashioned.  It certainly improved the look but the engineering was sound, the wider stance also genuinely enhanced handling.  Just to make sure people got the message about the “wide” in the “Wide Track” theme, their artwork deliberately exaggerated the width of the cars they depicted and while it was the era of “longer, lower, wider” (and PMD certainly did their bit in that), things never got quite that wide.  Had they been, the experience of driving would have felt something like steering an aircraft carrier's flight deck.

Fitzpatrick & Kaufman’s graphic art for the 1967 Pontiac Catalina Convertible advertising campaign.  One irony in the pair being contracted by PMD is that for most of the 1960s, Pontiacs were distinguished by some of the industry’s more imaginative and dramatic styling ventures and needed the artists' simulacral tricks less than some other manufacturers (and the Chryslers of the era come to mind, the solid basic engineering below cloaked sometimes in truly bizarre or just dull  bodywork).

This advertisement from 1961 hints also at something often not understood about what was later acknowledged as the golden era for both the US auto industry and their advertising agencies.  Although the big V8 cars of the post-war years are now remembered mostly for the collectable, high-powered, high value survivors with large displacement and induction systems using sometimes two four-barrel or three two-barrel carburetors, such things were a tiny fraction of total production and most V8 engines were tuned for a compromise between power (actually, more to the point for most: torque) and economy, a modest single two barrel sitting atop most and after the brief but sharp recession of 1958, even the Lincoln Continental, aimed at the upper income demographic, was reconfigured thus in a bid to reduce the prodigious thirst of the 430 cubic inch (7.0 litre) MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln) V8.  Happily for country and oil industry, the good times returned and by 1963 the big Lincolns were again guzzling gas four barrels at a time (the MEL in 1966 even enlarged to a 462 (7.6)) although there was the courtesy of the engineering trick of off-centering slightly the carburetor’s location so the primary two throats (the other two activated only under heavy throttle load) sat directly in the centre for optimal smoothness of operation.  Despite today’s historical focus on the displacement, horsepower and burning rubber of the era, there was then much advertising copy about (claimed) fuel economy, though while then as now, YMMV (your mileage may vary), the advertising standards of the day didn’t demand such a disclaimer.

Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1650), oil on canvas by Samuel Cooper (1609-1672).

Even if it’s something ephemeral, politicians are often sensitive about representations of their image but concerns are heightened when it’s a portrait which, often somewhere hung on public view, will long outlive them.  Although in the modern age the proliferation and accessibility of the of the photographic record has meant portraits no longer enjoy an exclusivity in the depiction of history, there’s still something about a portrait which conveys, however misleadingly, a certain authority.  That’s not to suggest the classic representational portraits have always been wholly authentic, a good many of those of the good and great acknowledged to have been painted by “sympathetic” artists known for their subtleties in rendering their subjects variously more slender, youthful or hirsute as the raw material required.  Probably few were like Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658) who told Samuel Cooper to paint him “warts and all”.  The artist obliged.

Randolph Churchill (1932), oil on canvas by Philip de László (left) and Randolph Churchill’s official campaign photograph (1935, right).

There have been artists for whom a certain fork of the simulacrum has provided a long a lucrative career.  Philip Philip Alexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László) was a UK-based Hungarian painter who was renowned for his sympathetic portraiture of royalty, the aristocracy and anyone else able to afford his fee (which for a time-consuming large, full-length works could be as much as 3000 guineas).  His reputation as a painter suffered after his death because he was dismissed by some as a “shameless flatterer” but in more recent years he’s been re-evaluated and there’s now much admiration for his eye and technical prowess, indeed, some have noted he deserves to be regarded more highly than many of those who sat for him.  His portrait of Randolph Churchill (1911-1968) (1932, left) has, rather waspishly, been described by some authors as something of an idealized simulacrum and the reaction of the journalist Alan Brien (1925-2008) was typical.  He met Churchill only in when his dissolute habits had inflicted their ravages and remarked that the contrast was startling, “…as if Dorian Gray had changed places with his picture for one day of the year.”  Although infamously obnoxious, on this occasion Churchill responded with good humor, replying “Yes, it is hard to believe that was me, isn’t it?  I was a joli garçon (pretty boy) in those days.”  That may have been true for as his official photograph for the 1935 Wavertree by-election (where he stood as an “Independent Conservative” on a platform of rearmament and opposition to Indian Home Rule) suggests, the artist may have been true to his subject.  Neither portrait now photograph seems to have helped politically and his loss at Wavertree was one of several he would suffer in his attempts to be elected to the House of Commons.

Portrait of Gina Rinehart (née Hancock, b 1954) by Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira (b 1983), National Gallery of Australia (NGA) (left) and photograph of Gina Rinehart (right).

While some simulacrums can flatter to deceive, others are simply unflattering.  That was what Gina Rinehard (described habitually as “Australia’s richest woman”) felt about two (definitely unauthorized) portraits of which are on exhibition at the NGA.  Accordingly, she asked they be removed from view and “permanently disposed of”, presumably with the same fiery finality with which bonfires consumed portraits of Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), both works despised by their subjects.  Unfortunately for Ms Reinhart, her attempted to save the nation from having to look at what she clearly considered bad art created only what is in law known as the “Streisand effect”, named after an attempt in 2003 by the singer Barbra Streisand (b 1942) to suppress publication of a photograph showing her cliff-top residence in Malibu, taken originally to document erosion of the California coast.  All that did was generate a sudden interest in the previously obscure photograph and ensure it went viral, overnight reaching an audience of millions as it spread around the web.  Ms Reinhart’s attempt had a similar consequence: while relatively few had attended Mr Namatjira’s solo Australia in Colour exhibition at the NGA and publicity had been minimal, the interest generated by the story saw the “offending image” printed in newspapers, appear on television news bulletins (they’re still a thing with a big audience) and of course on many websites.  The “Streisand effect” is regarded as an example “reverse psychology”, the attempt to conceal something making it seem sought by those who would otherwise not have been interested or bothered to look.  People should be careful in what they wish for.

Variations on a theme of simulacra: Four AI (artificial intelligence) generated images of Lindsay Lohan by Stable Diffusion.  The car depicted (centre right) is a Mercedes-Benz SL (R107, 1971-1989), identifiable as a post-1973 North American model because of the disfiguring bumper bar. 

So a simulacrum is a likeness of something which is recognizably of the subject (maybe with the odd hint) and not of necessity “good” or “bad”; just not exactly realistic.  Of course with techniques of lighting or angles, even an unaltered photograph can similarly mislead but the word is used usually of art or behavior such as “a simulacrum or pleasure” or “a ghastly simulacrum of a smile”.  In film and biography of course, the simulacrum is almost obligatory and the more controversial the subject, the more simulacral things are likely to be: anyone reading AJP Taylor’s study (1972) of the life of Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) would be forgiven for wondering how anyone could have said a bad word about the old chap.  All that means there’s no useful antonym of simulacrum because one really isn’t needed (there's replica, duplicate etc but the sense is different) while the synonyms are many, the choice of which should be dictated by the meaning one wishes to denote and they include: dissimilarity, unlikeness, archetype, clone, counterfeit, effigy, ersatz, facsimile, forgery, image, impersonation, impression, imprint, likeness, portrait, representation, similarity, simulation, emulation, fake, faux & study.  Simulacrum remains a little unusual in that while technically it’s a neutral descriptor, it’s almost always used with a sense of the negative or positive.