Callosity

Callosity (pronounced kuh-los-i-tee)

(1) In pathology, an alternative name for a callus.

(2) In botany, a hardened or thickened part of a plant.

(3) In zoology, as ischial callosity, a large callus on the butts of certain animals.

(4) In the human condition, being of a callous demeanor; insensitivity or hard-heartedness

1375–1425: From the late Middle English calosite, from the Late Latin callōsitās, the construct being callōs(us) (callous) (from callum (hardened skin) +‎ -ōsus (the suffix added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun)) + -itās which in English was rendered as callus + -ity, the substitute “o” a familiar device.  The –ity suffix was from the French -ité, from the Middle French -ité, from the Old French –ete & -eteit (-ity), from the Latin -itātem, from -itās, from the primitive Indo-European suffix –it.  It was cognate with the Gothic –iþa (-th), the Old High German -ida (-th) and the Old English -þo, -þu & -þ (-th).  It was used to form nouns from adjectives (especially abstract nouns), thus most often associated with nouns referring to the state, property, or quality of conforming to the adjective's description.  Callosity is a noun; the noun plural is callosities.

Essentially a thickening of the skin which forms in response to damage, a callus is one of the body’s protective mechanisms and example of how human skin have evolved to respond to a “fragile” area by replacing it with something “anti-fragile”.  The skin is a good barrier to much which would be dangerous if able to penetrate the surface but easily it can be cut and it’s prone to delimitation if exposed to repeated friction, something well known to gardeners digging holes, the skin on the palms of the hands soon “wearing off” at the points where the handle of the shovel repeatedly rubs.  That will be painful but the body will respond, replacing the dead skin with new skin which is thicker and harder, thus enabling the gardener to soon again pick up their shovel and return to their excavations.  This is an example of the general principle of healthy human physiology which responds to damage not by replacing things with something just as strong but something stronger, able to resist whatever force it was which caused the injury and it is the same with a bone fracture; when the bone knits back together, it will not be merely as strong as it was but a little stronger.  The new skin on the gardener’s hands will also be stronger and as the holes continue to be dug, the skin will become more robust still but the difference should not be thought of as fragile vs robust but as fragile vs anti-fragile, the point being that as pressure is applied, the material responds by becoming less-fragile.

Fragile and robust, although often used as antonyms (and in general use usefully so because the meanings are so well conveyed and understood) are really not opposites but simply degrees of the same thing.  In the narrow technical sense an expression of robustness or fragility is a measure of the same thing; a degree of strength.  The traditions of language obscure this but it becomes clear if measures of fragility or robustness are reduced to mathematics and expressed as comparative values in numbers.  It's true that on such a continuum a point could be set at which point something is regarded as no longer robust and becomes defined as fragile (indeed this is the essence of stress-testing) but this doesn't mean one is the antonym of the other.  The opposite of fragile is actually anti-fragile (the anti prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀντι- (anti-) (against, hostile to, contrasting with the norm, opposite of, reverse (also "like, reminiscent of"))).  The concept is well known in physiology and part of the object in some forms of strength training is to exploit the propensity of muscles to tear at stress points, relying on the body to repair these tears in a way that doesn’t restore them to their original form but makes them stronger so that if subjected again to the same stress, a tear won’t happen.  It’s thus an act of anti-fragility, the process illustrated also by the calluses which form on the hands after the skin blisters in response to work.  Fragile and robust merely express points on a spectrum and are used according to emphasize the extent of strength; anti-fragile is the true opposite.

The idea of anti-fragile was introduced by Lebanese-born, US-based mathematician and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b 1960) in the book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (2012), the fourth of five works which explore his ideas relation to uncertainty, randomness & probability, the best-known and most influential was The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007).  His work was thoughtful, intriguing and practical and was well received although the more accessible writing he adopted for the later volumes attracted criticism from some who felt an academic style more suited to the complex nature of his material; probably few who read the texts agreed with that.  Apart from the ideas and the use to which they can be put, his deconstruction of many suppositions was also an exploration of the rigidities of thought we allow our use of language to create.

Anti-callus devices (gloves the most common type) are used when the aim is to avoid the growth of a callus, the use of an “artificial callus” sometimes preferable to the natural.  A carpet layer in knee pads (left) and bra strap “cushions” (right).

When the new areas of skin are called calluses (calli the alternative plural), callus from the Latin callum (hard skin).  Most often used to describe the hardened areas of skin (typically on hands & feet) induced as a response to repeated friction, wear or use, in anatomy, the same word is applied to the initially soft or cartilaginous substance exuded at the site of a bone fracture which converts ultimately into bone, knitting the fragments into the one piece.  One the process fully is complete, if again exposed to the same stress, the bone will not break.  In botany, it’s used of the new formation over the end of a cutting. Callus is a noun & verb, the calluses, the present participle callusing and the past, callused.

In some professions, the callus can be close to essential; those whose life involves supporting weights on their shoulders form them on the pressure points, enabling them to ply their trade without undue pain or further damage.  However, not all whose shoulders might suffer welcome calluses, however beneficial they might be:  Women who wish to avoid what manufactures term the “shoulder grooving” caused by the pressure of their bra’s shoulder straps (the physics of this a product of (1) the weight supported and (2) its surface distribution which is dictated essentially by the width of the strap) can buy inserts for the straps which increase the surface area, thereby reducing the specific loading by re-distributing the downward pressure.  A variation on this idea is the “knee pad” worn by those who lay carpets, floor tiles and such.  These folk are compelled to work “on their knees” for hours at a time, often upon hard and sometimes rough surfaces and although, given time, calluses would form were the work to be performed unprotected, it would not be a pleasant experience and the degree of hardening needed would likely adversely affect normal mobility.  In zoology, calluses are a noted environmental adaptation among some species, (Old World) gibbons, monkeys and some chimpanzees having evolved notably large calluses on their butts (described as ischial callosities (the seventeenth century ischium (from the Latin ischium, from the Ancient Greek ἰσχίον (iskhíon) (hip joint)) describing the lowest of the three bones that make up each side of the pelvis).  On the animals so endowed, the advantage is the ability to sleep while sitting upright on thin branches, safe from both predators and the risk of falling.

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

In figurative use callosity came to be used to refer to one with a lack of feeling or capacity for emotion but the use when documented comes usually with the caveat that those so described are not “psychopaths” but merely the “hard-hearted”.  So it’s there to be used and if it seems not to suit, English offers has quite an array of choice when speaking of those lacking emotional range.  There is “heartless” & “hard-hearted”, both of which allude to the ancient idea of the special significance of the heart as the source of all that human feeling and character; even now it’s known to be a “just a pump”, the romantic notions persist in many culture and variations of the ❤ symbol are among the most frequently used emojis.  “Cold-blooded” is different in that although it’s blood the heart pumps, the operative word really is “cold”, implying decisions made or actions taken without emotion intruding and in idiomatic use, a “cold-blooded murder” (such as a contract killing done for payment) is viewed with less sympathy than a crime of passion (such murderers of said to have been “seeing the red mist” of “hot” blood at the time of their crime.  “Stolid” and “impassive” differs in that they can often be virtues and anyway suggest not an absence of capacity for feeling but its repression and one who wrote on how essential that was to civilization yet simultaneous damaging to individuals was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), his ideas later taken up by German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979).  Mankind probably didn’t surprise Freud but doubtless we disappointed Marcuse.  Finally, there is “stoic” which traces back to the Hellenic school of stoicism, a philosophy with a great following in Antiquity which was intended always to be practical, a way to help citizens live good lives rather than anything concerned with abstractions.  In its pure form it survives in that form but the modern re-purposing of the word means it’s now used to mean something like “suffering in silence”.  “Callosity” then is one of many ways to refer to the “unfeeling” and its use in this context is based on the use in medicine, a callosity (ie a callus) being “skin of abnormal hardness & thickness” which can be poked or pricked with the subject barely feeling the intrusion.  In that it’s subtly different from “thick skinned” which usually means “not easily offended”.

Fragile

Fragile (pronounced fraj-uhl (U) or fraj-ahyl (non-U))

(1) Easily broken, shattered, or damaged; delicate; brittle; frail.

(2) Vulnerably delicate, as in appearance.

(3) Lacking in substance or force; flimsy.

1505–1515: From the Middle English fragile (liable to sin, morally weak), from the Middle French fragile, from the fourteenth century Old French fragele, from the Latin fragilis (easily broken) (doublet of frêle), the construct being frag- (variant stem of the verb frangere (break), from the primitive Indo-European root bhreg- (to break) + -ilis.  The -ilis (neuter -ile) suffix was from the Proto-Italic -elis, from the primitive Indo-European -elis, from -lós; it was used to form an adjective noun of relation, frequently passive, to the verb or root.  It was cognate with fraction & fracture and doublet of frail.  The original meaning from circa 1510 (liable to sin, morally weak) by circa 1600 extended to "liable to break" as a back-formation from fragility which was actually an adoption of the sense in Latin.  The transferred sense "of frail constitution" (of persons) dates from 1858.  The companion adjective frail emerged in the mid fourteenth century in the sense of "morally weak", from the twelfth century Old French fraile & frele (weak, frail, sickly, infirm) (enduring in Modern French as frêle), from the Latin fragilis.  The US slang noun meaning "a woman" is documented from 1908 and although there’s no evidence, etymologists have noted Shakespeare's "Frailty, thy name is woman" (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2).  The comparative fragiler and the superlative fragilest are both correct but the more elegant “more fragile” and “most fragile” tend to be preferred.  Fragile is used usually as an adjective but can be applied as a noun (typically by folk like furniture movers) or in the same way as “exquisite”.  Fragilely is an adverb and fragility is a noun; the noun plural is fragiles.

Words which are either synonyms or close in meaning include delicate, feeble, frail, weak, brittle, crisp, crumbly, decrepit, fine, flimsy, fracturable, frangible, friable, infirm, insubstantial, shivery, slight & unsound.  The antonym most often used to suggest the opposite quality to fragile is “robust” (evincing strength and health; strong).  Robust dates from circa 1545 and was a learned borrowing from circa 1400 Medieval Latin rōbustus (oaken, hard, strong), the construct being rōbus- (stem of rōbur (oak, strength) + -tus (the adjectival suffix).

Lindsay Lohan looking fragile: Lindsay (2019) by Sam McKinniss (b 1985) (left), from a reference photograph taken 22 July 2012, leaving the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, LA (right).

However, fragile and robust, although often used as antonyms (and in general use usefully so because the meanings are so well conveyed and understood) are really not opposites but simply degrees of the same thing.  In the narrow technical sense an expression of robustness or fragility is a measure of the same thing; a degree of strength.  The traditions of language obscure this but it becomes clear if measures of fragility or robustness are reduced to mathematics and expressed as comparative values in numbers.  It's true that on such a continuum a point could be set at which point something is regarded as no longer robust and becomes defined as fragile (indeed this is the essence of stress-testing) but this doesn't mean one is the antonym of the other.

The opposite of fragile is actually antifragile (the anti prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀντι- (anti-) (against, hostile to, contrasting with the norm, opposite of, reverse (also "like, reminiscent of"))).  The concept is well known in physiology and part of the object in some forms of strength training is to exploit the propensity of muscles to tear at stress points, relying on the body to repair these tears in a way that doesn’t restore them to their original form but makes them stronger so that if subjected again to the same stress, a tear won’t happen.  It’s thus an act of antifragility, the process illustrated also by the calluses which form on the hands after the skin blisters in response to work.  Fragile and robust merely express points on a spectrum and are used according to emphasize the extent of strength; antifragile is the true opposite.

The idea of antifragile was introduced by Lebanese-born, US-based mathematician and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b 1960) in the book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (2012), the fourth of five works which explore his ideas relation to uncertainty, randomness & probability, the best-known and most influential was The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007).  His work was thoughtful, intriguing and practical and was well received although the more accessible writing he adopted for the later volumes attracted criticism from some who felt an academic style more suited to the complex nature of his material; probably few who read the texts agreed with that.  Apart from the ideas and the use to which they can be put, his deconstruction of many suppositions is also an exploration of the rigidities of thought we allow our use of language to create.

Sonoramic

Sonoramic (pronounced sonn-o-ram-ick)

A form of enhanced induction for internal combustion engines; sometimes called cross-ram or long-ram induction.  The form SonoRamic was also used.

1959:  A compound word constructed by engineers (apparently with no contribution from the marketing department), the construct being the Latin sonō (make a noise, sound) + the English ram + -ic.  Sonō was from the primitive Indo-European swenhe (to sound, resound) which was cognate with the Sanskrit स्वनति (svanati) (to sound, resound).  The more productive Latin derivative was Latin sonus (sound, a noise) from the primitive Indo-European swon-o, again from the root swenhe.  Ram was from the Old English ramm (in the sense of "battering ram", from the Old High German ram, thought probably related to the Old Norse rammr (strong) and the Old Church Slavonic ramenu (impetuous, violent).  The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The engineers were influenced in their coining of sonoramic by the debut three years earlier of the sonogram (thereby creating sonogramic), a form of diagnostic imaging used in medicine.  Sonoramic is a noun; the noun plural is Sonoramics.  There are no standard derived forms but there are owners who might have coined the informal adverb sonoramically to describe the way their machine does its stuff.

Fluid dynamics and resonant conditions

1960 Chrysler 300F with long-ram Sonoramic 413 cid (6.8 litre) wedge V8.

All else being equal, increasing the volume of the fuel-air mixture (energy input) flowing through an internal combustion engine (ICE) increases power and torque (energy output).  One way to increase the throughput is to use an external device such as a supercharger or turbocharger but it can be achieved also by creating resonance in the induction system, this done by designing a passage which uses the physics of fluid dynamics to increase pressure in specific spaces.  Obviously uninvolved in the engineering, Chrysler’s marketing people claimed in 1960 the Sonoramic was new technology but for many years the principle had been used in racing engines, the mathematical equations determining acoustics & resonance having been published by German physicist and physician Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821–1894) in a scientific paper published in 1863.  Indeed, the concept had before been used on road cars but always in a discrete manner; what Chrysler did in 1959 with their elongated tubular "ram-runners" was make a dramatic fashion statement in designer colors.

Representation of fluid dynamics under specific resonant conditions.

Essentially, the Sonoramic is an implementation of Sir Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) first law of motion, more commonly known as the law of inertia: “An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion” and it’s the second part which Sonoramic exploited.  During the intake cycle of an engine, the fuel-air mix flows through the intake manifold, past the intake valve, and into the cylinder, then the intake valve shuts.  At that point, the law of inertia comes into play: Because the air was in motion, it wants to stay in motion but can’t because the valve is shut so it piles up against the valve with something of a concertina effect.  With one piece of air piling up on the next, the air becomes compressed and, being under pressure, this stuff has to go somewhere so it turns around and flows back through the intake manifold in the form of a pressure wave.  This pressure wave bounces back and forth in the runner and if it arrives back at the intake valve when the valve opens, it’s drawn into the engine.  This bouncing pressure wave of air and the proper arrival time at the intake valve creates a low-pressure form of supercharging but for this to be achieved all variables have to be aligned so the pressure wave arrives at the intake valve at the right time.  This combination of synchronized events is known as the "resonant conditions".

Long (lower) and short-tube (upper) Sonoramic intake manifolds.

Most of the Sonoramics produced were "long-tubes" with a tuned internal-length of 30 inches (760mm), generating prodigious quantities of mid-range torque, optimized for overtaking under highway conditions.  These characteristics were ideal for road cars but also built were a small number of the so-called "short-tube" Sonoramics, a somewhat misleading term because both shared the same external dimensions.  The critical difference was the short-tube units had only a 15 inch (380mm) length of the internal passages resonance-tuned and this, at the expense of mid-range torque, produced much more power high in the rev-range making them more suitable for competition.  Used by Chrysler to set a number of speed records, these were the most charismatic of the breed and a handful were built with manual gearboxes.  At auction, in November 2010, the sole 1960 Chrysler 300F short-tube Sonoramic convertible with the Pont-a-Mousson 4-speed gearbox, sold for US$437,250.

Sonoramic in silver, one of the "long tube" versions tuned for mid-range torque.

The first four generations of Chrysler's 300 letter series had used increasingly larger versions of the Hemi V8 and the 1958 300D with a 392 cubic inch (6.4 litre) version even was (briefly and abortively) offered the novelty of a very expensive fuel-injection system.  The Hemi, heavy and expensive to produce, was in 1959’s 300E replaced by the larger capacity, wedge-head 413 (6.7) which matched it for power but lacked the mystique, something substantially restored in 1960 when the 300F debuted with the sexy Sonoramic.  Ram Induction today is common, although contemporary designs, integrated with fuel-injection systems, are not as photogenic as the original Sonoramics.  As well as raw aluminium, the tubes were available in the designer colors of the time, red, gold and blue and opinion is divided about which look is the coolest but, impressionistically, red ones seem to be the most photographed.  That is likely a function of the red having been produced in the greatest volume (followed by the silver) while the gold (used on the expensive Chrysler 300s) was comparatively rare.  The blue units seem never to have been fitted to standard production cars and because the look can be re-created with high-temperature paint, collectors suspect there are now more blue tubes than were ever produced by the factory.

1958 Chevrolet Corvette “Fuelie” with fuel-injected 283 cubic inch (4.6 litre) V8.  The Rochester mechanical fuel injection worked better than the Sonoramic but didn’t look as good.  In 1958 the fuel-injected Corvette was Corvette was available with 250 (Code 579) or 290 (Code 579D) horsepower (HP), the more powerful almost twice as popular, selling 1007 compared with 504.

Engineers and other real nerds tend to use terms like “short ram” & “long ram” for the induction system but because of the attraction of the word, most today seem to prefer “Sonoramic”.  Within the corporation, Dodge used “D-500 Ram Induction” and Plymouth called it “SonoRamic Commando” but when installed on the letter-series Chrysler 300s, both “Ram Induction” & “Ram Injection” appeared, the latter apparently exclusive to print advertising (which at the time tended to be more in magazines (not necessarily specialist automotive publications), the agency’s tactic to engage in a bit of what would later be called “ambush marketing” by piggy-backing on the image created by General Motors’ successful promotion of the mechanical “fuel-injection” system their Rochester division was producing for Chevrolet and Pontiac.  These days, such an approach might be labelled “deceptive and misleading conduct” but if folk in the early 1960s weren’t more forgiving, they were less litigious.

1958 Plymouth advertising.

The Sonoramic's plumbing couldn’t match what fuel-injection achieved but as the acceleration tests and high-speed runs confirmed, it did what it said on the tin and was considerably cheaper than the intricate mechanical mechanism.  However, there were drawbacks to the simplicity because unlike most of Detroit’s other implementations of dual four-barrel carburettor (“dual-quad” to the nerds) the Sonoramics ran permanently with all eight throats feeding the engine, each unit attached to the opposite bank of cylinders.  On systems where the carburettors were more closely placed (in-line or side-by-side), the usual practice was to use just one except when needed, the same principle as the “demand superchargers” used during the inter-war years by Mercedes-Benz in which the blower was engaged only when the upper gears were in use and the throttle was pushed wide open, high in the rev-range.  What that meant was the dual quad cars delivered fuel economy which was “poor” rather than the “atrocious” delivered by the Sonoramics but both appealed to a demographic which accepted that for everything one does there’s a price to be paid and gas (petrol) then was cheap although not quite as cheap and its expression in pre-inflation dollars & cents make it appear to twenty-first century eyes.

Sonoramic in red, one of the rare "short tube" versions tuned for top-end power.

Anyway, when filling up, owners of Sonoramics had the consolation of being able to open the hood and gaze lovingly at their sensuous tubes, a construction visually more accomplished than Rochester’s business-like hardware.   Unfortunately the affection didn’t always extend to the behaviour when starting a Sonoramic on a winter morning, the combined 120 inches (3 metres) of cold aluminum far from ideal at maintaining the fuel-air mix in the required aerosol.  Until the metal was warm, fuel was prone to condensing, creating what was soon known as the dreaded “puddling effect” and in colder places some owners improvised “heated inlet manifolds”, the most simple approach being a pair of incandescent light bulbs rigged above the tubes for 30 minutes prior to starting, one instance where the inherent inefficiency of the old technology (where much energy was lost as heat rather than light) proved useful.  Others gave up and had the system exchanged for a prosaic single four-barrel carburetor, an echo of Chrysler’s miserable experience in 1958 when 35 cars were built with Bendix “Electrojector” fuel injection.  Unfortunately, the on-board analogue computer (which which had performed reliably in testing) proved fragile in real-world conditions (shades of MG's experience with the MGA Twin-Cam) and all but one of the cars was returned to dealerships in response to a corporate recall to be converted to the standard dual-quad apparatus.  It would be decades before advances in solid-state technology made electronic fuel-injection a viable mass-market product.

One of the Sonoramic’s relations: 1993 Mercedes-Benz 600 SEC (C140).   

Despite the impression probably gained by the few souls who now trouble themselves to see what lies under a hood (bonnet), long-tube induction is common but now usually concealed beneath enveloping plastic moldings (sometimes fashioned from real or fake carbon fibre as the price tag rises).  The manufacturers have sound reasons for doing that but the expanse of flat, black plastic is an uninspiring sight compared with things like the 6.0 litre (365 cubic inch) Mercedes-Benz V12 (M120).  The C140 & W140 were among the last of the old-style Mercedes-Benz of admirable engineering & build quality but even in some of them the troublesome tentacles of new concerns intruded, manifested by sometimes fragile electronics and wiring with coatings which biodegraded prematurely.  In 1993, because of model proliferation, the factory changed the naming convention so in that year there were some "one off" badges including the early V12 R129 roadsters appearing as "600 SL" (later to be SL 600) and the sequence of the C140 was especially unusual in that it was the last of the “SECs” and the first of the “CLs”, its mid-life spent as an “S”, the confusing alpha-numeric trajectory of the C140 600 being:

1992 600 SEC (Not sold in North America)

1993 600 SEC (Global)

1994-1995 S 600 (Global)

1996-1997 S 600 (North America) & CL 600 (RoW (rest of the world))

1998 CL 600 (Global)

1999 CL 600 (North America only)

Republic P-47 Thunderbolt test-bed with XI-2200 V16 (1945).

Chrysler’s interest in ram tuning was an out-growth of the desire to exploit the findings of research undertaken during the war developing very high-performance piston engines for fighter aircraft.  This had culminated in the XI-2220, a 2,220 cubic inch (36.4 litre) V16 aero-engine which, rated at 2450 HP, was tested in a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt (1947-1945), an appropriate platform given the P-47 was then the biggest, heaviest single-engined fighter ever to enter service (among piston-engined aircraft, it still is).  Although the indications were that close to 4000 HP was achievable (at least for short durations under the EWR (emergency war rating protocol), with the advent of the jet engine the days of the big piston-engined fighters were nearly done so the V16 project was cancelled, a fate suffered also by the other outstanding big aero-engine of that last generation: the Napier-Sabre H24.

XI-2220, V16 aircraft engine (1944-1945).

The lessons learned however would be applied on the ground instead of in the skies because although big capacity piston engines had mostly been rendered obsolete for fighter aircraft, a few generations of some a bit smaller were about to start roaming American roads.  The cars and their engines would be like nothing before seen in mass-produced, affordable cars, Chrysler adopting for their new 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) V8 in 1951 the V16’s hemispherical combustion chambers, a feature it would use for most of that decade and the next and such was the aura of the name it’s used still, even if things inside are now a bit less hemispherical.

Chrysler A-311 V8 experimental engine.

The new Hemi V8 had obvious performance potential and the engineers experimented with the tuned-length induction system used on the V16 before the aero-engine's final supercharger/turbocharger combination was adopted.  So successful was the ram-tuned V8 (named A-311) attempts were made to contest the 1952 Indianapolis 500 but the race’s sanctioning body understood the implications the remarkable new powerplant would have on their carefully-curated ecosystem of owners and sponsors so declared it didn’t comply with the rules (even tweaking them a bit to ensure it never would).

The Ramcharger Club’s 1949 Plymouth Business Coupe with “ram-charging” intake manifold (a concept soon to be marketed as “SonoRamic”) and “eight-into-eight megaphone exhaust” apparatus, circa 1958.

The research however continued and, although it’s not clear to what extent their efforts received factory-support, in the late 1950s some of Chrysler's young engineers formed the drag racing-focused Ramchargers Club using, somewhat improbably, a 1949 Plymouth business coupe fitted with a particularly extravagant implementation of the technology, a surrealistically tall intake manifold, a device built for dynamometer testing and never intended for a moving vehicle.  They dubbed the Plymouth "High & Mighty".  Bizarre it may have looked but the cartoon-like Plymouth achieved results which vindicated the approach and a less obtrusive version of the system was made available on certain Plymouths, Dodges and Chryslers, the highest evolution of Sonoramic offered on the 300 letter series cars until 1964.

Lindsay Lohan enjoying the effects of fluid dynamics.

Not content with applying the science of fluid dynamics only to the induction system, the Ramchargers used it also for the exhaust headers.  Rather than additional power, the commendably juvenile quest was for noise, the exaggerated, trumpet-like tubes using the megaphone principle which increases volume by raising acoustic impedance.  The desired result was achieved and although there's no record of anyone with a decibel-meter taking a reading, the old Plymouth was said to be spectacularly loud; megaphone exhausts subsequently were banned.    

Chrysler Slant Six with Hyper Pak.

Chrysler didn’t restrict the ram induction idea to the big-block V8s, using it also on the short-lived (1960-1962) Hyper Pak performance option for the both 170 cubic inch (2.8 litre, 1959-1969) and 225 cubic inch (3.7 litre, 1987-2000) versions of their Slant Six, the engineers taking advantage of the space afforded by the angled block to permit the curvaceous intake runners nearly to fill the engine bay.  The Hyper Pak wasn't seen in showrooms but was available as an over-the-counter kit (literally a cardboard box containing all necessary parts) from Dodge & Plymouth spare parts departments and its life was limited because it became a victim of its own success.  Although less suitable for street use because it turned the mild-mannered straight-six into something at its best at full throttle, in the race events for which it was eligible it proved unbeatable, dominating the competition for two years, compelling the sanctioning body cancel the series.  Success isn't always rewarded.

Although it was the longer lived 225 version which gained the Slant Six its stellar reputation for durability and the ease with which additional power could be extracted, there's always been a following for the short-stroke 170 because of its European-like willingness to rev, the characteristics of the over-square engine (unique among the slant-six's three displacements (170-198-225)) unusually lively for a US straight-six.  Despite some aspects of the specification being modest (there were only four main bearings although they were the beefy units used in the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8), for much of its life it used a tough, forged steel crankshaft and high-speed tolerant solid valve lifters, features which made a robust engine.  Despite that, after the Hyper Pak affair, Chrysler showed little interest in any performance potential, knowing the US preference for V8s, something which doomed also Pontiac's short-lived single overhead camshaft (SOHC) straight-six (1966-1969).  A version of the 225 with a two-barrel carburetor (rated at 160 horsepower, an increase of 15 over the standard unit) was offered in some non-North American markets where V8 sales were not dominant and it proved very popular in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Central & South America but only when tighter US emission regulations forced its adoption did a 225 with a two barrel carburetor appear in the home market, installed to restore power losses rather than seek gains.

Manikin & Mannequin

Manikin (pronounced man-i-kin)

(1) A man short in stature; (sometimes as a term of endearment but now archaic).

(2) In folklore, a dwarf; pygmy.

(3) An anatomically correct model of the human body (or a part of the body), used for teaching or demonstrating surgical and other clinical techniques; a specialized form is the phantom, an anatomical model of a fully developed fetus, for use in teaching midwifery or obstetrics.

(4) A three-dimensional figure, dummy or effigy representing a man or person (now replaced by mannequin), manikin now correctly used only in the medical context.

1560s: From the Dutch manneken (literally “little man”), a diminutive of the Middle Dutch mannekijn, from the Proto-Germanic manwaz, from the primitive Indo-European root man- (man).  The original meaning was "a jointed model of the human figure used by artists" and the sense and spelling is often blended with mannequin.  The early synonyms (in the context of small humans) included homunculus, midget, peewee, shorty, titman, & doll and (in the sense of the artificial creations) dummy, figure, mannequin & marionette.  The noun plural is manikins; the (rare) alternative spelling is mannikin.

Mannequin (pronounced man-i-kin)

(1) A styled and three-dimensional representation of the human form used in window displays, as of clothing; dummy.

(2) A figure or model of the human figure used by tailors, dress designers etc, for fitting or making clothes; historically made from timber but now constructed from many combinations of materials.

(3) A person employed to wear clothing to be photographed or to be displayed before customers, buyers etc; a clothes model (dated).

(4) In the visual arts, another name for a lay figure

1902: From the fifteenth century French mannequin (model to display clothes) from the Dutch manneken (model of the human figure used by artists).  Mannequin was the French form of the same word that yielded manikin and in English, was sometimes used in the sense "artificial man" (especially in translations, the trend apparently triggered by the frequency of use in early twentieth century translations of the works of Victor Hugo (1802–1885)).  Originally, it was applied to humans in the modern sense of “a model” and not until 1931 did it assume the meaning of “artificial human model figure to display clothing”.  A sideway variation was the later “clotheshorse” (a person whose chief interest and pleasure is dressing fashionably).  The noun plural is mannequins.

The difference between a Manikin and a Mannequin

Lindsay Lohan with several mannequins, New York Fashion Week, 2009.

Mannequin was a word once used where model would now be preferred, a person employed to wear clothes and carry accessories but since the 1930s a mannequin is a usually plastic or fibreglass emulation of the human form (in shape but not fine detail), typically found scattered throughout clothing and department stores, most famously as part of displays in shop-front windows.  Most mannequins represent a body shape within a fairly narrow range of dimensions but the industry recognizes eighteen different types including the obvious like “sexy” and “sporty” but there are also the niches such as pregnant people.  However, despite the industry's vocal embrace of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), impressionistically, it would seem the female mannequins on display still tend to the slender.

Manikins are also human shaped models but rather than being a fashion platform, they are used to help simulate medical, surgical, or clinical scenarios to assist in training and the honing of technique.  There are a variety of manikins and in the jargon of the medical devices industry, they range from low to high fidelity, the rating an indication of the degree of anatomical realism included, a high-fidelity manikin sometimes even including movement, speech, muscular reaction and facial expressions.  A high-fidelity manikin might include a complete set of internal organs and have many interchangeable parts whereas a low-fidelity model might be just a hollow shell used to teach students how to insert an IV or perfect the techniques of bandaging.

Manikins exist so those working in a clinical environment, from students to surgeons, can enjoy a safe environment in which to practice their skills, without the obvious risk of using live patients.  Although doctors continue, as they have for centuries, to murder their patients, rarely suffering any consequences due to the cozy legal apparatus known as “medical misadventure”, the use of manikins presumably lessens the slaughter of the innocent.  Like mannequins, manikins are designed for purpose and there are birthing simulators, newborn simulators, simulators that go into cardiac arrest, and even dental simulators.

L'Inconnue’s death mask.

Although anatomical models were used in medical training as early as the sixteenth century, the first manikin (in the modern understanding) was released in 1960 as a device for teaching cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).  The design parameters were written by two physicians, Austrian Peter Safar (1924-2003) and American James Elam (1918–1995), the engineering and fabrication handled by Norwegan Åsmund Lærdal (1914-1981), head of a company with expertise in plastic molding from their experience as a manufacturer of children’s toys.  Famously, the face on the manikin is that of L'Inconnue (L'Inconnue de la Seine (The unknown woman of the Seine)).

Crowd at the public viewing portal of the Paris Morgue, circa 1890.

L'Inconnue, was probably about sixteen when she died in the late 1880s and although it’s not certain, most then concluded she took her own life.  As was done at the time, after her lifeless form was pulled from the River Seine at the Quai du Louvre, the corpse was put on public display at the Paris mortuary, a popular attraction and one justified by the purpose of hoping some of the dead might be identified.  Despite the daily crowd, none came forward to name L'Inconnue.  The dead waif however was far from unnoticed, many remarking on her unusually serene appearance and one much taken by her was the pathologist who performed the autopsy.  He had a plaster-cast taken of her face (a not uncommon practice) and within years, reproductions of L'Inconnue's alluring, deathly likeness were being sold throughout Europe, the mesmerizing mask, later describe by philosopher Albert Camus (1913-1960) as a "drowned Mona Lisa", fixed to the walls of drawing rooms, fashionable salons and the studios of (presumably already troubled) artists.  The silent beauty also attracted writers and early in the twentieth century there was a rash of imaginative fiction speculating about the short life of L'Inconnue, many melodramatic, most constructing a short, tragic life battered by ill fortune and finally taken by the waters of the Seine.  For writers, it was the lure of the tragic, death, water and a waif irresistibly romantic and in death she became the one of the great influencers of her age, described as “the aesthetic template for a whole generation of German girls who modeled their looks on her", adored in death as many authors liked to imagine she never was when alive.

L'Inconnue’s death mask would over the years attract artists and it’s been rendered in many materials including ceramics, copper, bronze, granite and even chocolate, seen as an icon and on canvas with a variety paints.

Decades later, L'Inconnue’s image would again be revived.  Åsmund Lærdal in the 1940s had been a manufacturer of small wooden toys but in the post-war years, attracted by the possibilities of the then novel plastic, he experimented with the soft, malleable substance and, finding it ideal for his purposes, embarked on mass-production, one of his products the acclaimed toy “Anne”, a baby with “sleeping eyes and natural hair".  Anne enjoyed international success and when told the two anesthesiologists, impressed by the life-like behavior of the doll’s plastic material, had asked if he could fabricate and mass-produce a life-sized adult manikin on which could be demonstrated their newly developed resuscitation technique, they found an attentive listener; some years earlier, Lærdal's two year old son had nearly drowned and had his father not forced the water from his airways, he too may well have died.  For a toymaker with expertise in the molding of plastic to form hollow toys, it was a formidable engineering challenge not only to create a realistic, functional maikin that reliably could be used to demonstrate the physical complexities of CPR but to design a mass-produced product which would be financially viable.

Resusci Anne in carry-case.

The technical specifications provided by the doctors had included a collapsible chest for practicing compressions and open lips to simulate mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but Lærdal, after discussions with his engineers, concluded it was also important the manikin should be recognizably female, suspecting men might be reluctant to practice CPR on a male doll's lips.  It was during the design process Lærdal recalled the enigmatic half-smile on a mask he'd seen on a wall while visiting relatives and it was this memory which inspired him to choose L'Inconnue.  Resusci Anne (Rescue Anne or CPR Anne in the US) was released in 1960 and was the first device of its type, so successful the Lærdal Toy Company soon transformed to become Lærdal Medical and it’s estimated over 300 million people around the world have been trained in CPR, most of them using Resusci Anne.  If L'Inconnue really did, as so many authors would have, take her own life in the depths of a despair only unrequited love can induce, fate would have her in death inspire Resusci Anne, called “the most kissed girl in the world”.

Perhaps surprisingly, Andy Warhol never took L'Inconnue as his subject.  This one is a fake.

Despite the sad charm of that, it couldn’t happen now, the ethics of making reproductions of a dead person's face and selling them without consent, un-discussed in the late nineteenth century, troubling today.  Were such a product now to be created and a life-like face was necessary, the visage would have to be either licensed or anonymized.  However, psychologists have conducted trials using a genuine Resusci Anne and one with no discernible facial characteristics and reported the more anthropomorphic appeared to enhance the realism of resuscitation training.  The researchers noted the face made CPR training more intense and stressful for both clinicians and lay-people but their follow-up questionnaires some months later revealed those who “kissed L'Inconnue” displayed a much higher recall of the techniques learned on the day.  She may have died forgotten, but in her immortal after-life, L'Inconnue is clearly memorable.

The romance of L'Inconnue is compelling but there have long been doubts about the original masks, sceptics suggesting it’s unlikely the flawless features could have come from a corpse fished from a river, the suspicion being a pretty young model might have been the source for the cast taken to take commercial advantage of the great public interest in the story of the young girl.  There are other theories too and the truth will never be known but L'Inconnue’s mystery is the essence of the strange tale.

Some assembly required: The Apprentice Doctor’s Full-Body Adult, Nursing and Trauma Manikin.

Supplied as a kit complete with burns, lacerations, and broken bones, it’s said to offer a realistic experience in the identification, assessment, treatment, and transport of trauma patients and disaster victims and can be used in forensic medicine and CSI training, working well as a manikin for crime scene simulation projects.  Prices start at US$1,199.00.

To ensure durability and ease of maintenance, the manikin contains no latex and the manufacturer cautions the kit (1) is intended exclusively for classroom instructional (educational) use and training purposes, (2) requires adult supervision and guidance for students under the age of 17 years and is not suitable for those under the age of 15 and (3) contains items that may pose a choking hazard to toddlers and babies (keep out of reach of these age groups).

Intended as a low-maintenance product, the post training cleaning routine consists of (1) after nasal feeding, gastric lavage, enema, male and female urethral catheterization procedures, empty all the residual liquid, used from the stomach, intestines and bladder, (2) Rinse all used tubes & catheters with water and dry for re-use and (3) if in disuse for an extended period of time, the manikin should be wiped clean, covered and placed in a cool, dry place; this will extend service life.

Art deco (though with some debt to mannerism) lady Mannequin bust in plaster for hat or jewelry display.  Just as there are flesh & blood models who specialize is one body part (hand models, foot models etc), there are also mannequins produced for the purpose of featuring just one or several body parts.

Fashion mannequins have been in use since the fifteenth century and were originally the head-forms with which milliners ensured a hat maintained the correct shape during construction.  Once a purely “back-of-house” or “workshop” device, as the price of glass was reduced by the adoption of techniques perfected by the late sixteenth century, glass-windows in shop-fronts became larger and more common so milliners essentially invented the “window display” in its modern form.  Although it had been the practice of many artisans and merchants to display their goods in this manner, it was the milliners who were first in fashion.  By the mid eighteenth century, full-scale, wickerwork mannequins were being used to display dresses, the more conveniently adjustable versions made with wire first manufactured in Paris in 1835.  However, the expansion of the trade created a demand for cheaper, lighter, non-adjustable forms which were purely a platform for display and the first (papier-mâché) female mannequins were sold in France in the mid-nineteenth century, the higher-end stores soon adopting mannequins made from wax which produced a more lifelike appearance but, expensive and apt to be fragile, the wax was in the 1920s supplanted by a more durable composite material, based on plaster.

Statuesque: Two mannequins in the window display of Chanel Shop, Prince's Building, Central Chater Road, Hong Kong.

Modern mannequins are almost always made from plastic or fiberglass although the, as marketing devices, the haute couture houses have used (sometimes stylized) one-off mannequins made from metal and even what was claimed to be carbon-fibre though experts quickly pronounced it fake (as opposed to faux).  Fiberglass mannequins are usually more expensive than plastic and tend to be more fragile but can be rendered in a more life-like form which can be done with plastics but not at a reasonable cost.  In fact, the trend in recent years has been for plastic mannequins to eschew any attempt to appear realistic, presumably to ensure the focus fixes on the clothes.  Artists have also used articulated mannequins (historically known as lay figures), as a tool to assist the rendition of draped figures, the advantage being that unlike a live model (on an hourly rate), a mannequin can be kept indefinitely immobile or adjusted as required.  Additionally, they don’t complain about the cold, demand lunch or take cigarette breaks.

Vintage Playtex Cross Your Heart wire-free bra in beige, displayed on fibreglass mannequin.  For specific purposes, mannequins are sometimes produced with certain aspects scaled beyond the usual size range.

While there are variations which tend to be product-deterministic (and the upper ranges of the alphabet in the bra business is an obvious niche), the size and shape of most mannequins exists in a predictably narrow range and one acknowledged to be smaller in most dimensions (except height) than either the majority of the adult female population or that aligned to the majority of the garments actually sold.  In this of course it follows the profile of the industry’s live models who are famously taller, lighter and thinner than all but a handful of their customers although, under pressure from activists, this pattern is now (slightly) less extreme than once it was, despite many wishing those days would return.  Before we called models models we called them mannequins and, flesh, plastic or fibreglass, little has changed as an extract from The Bystander’s (a British weekly magazine which in 1940 merged with Tatler to be published as The Tatler & Bystander until 1968) edition of 15 August 1906 suggests:

”A mannequin is a good-looking, admirably formed young lady, whose mission is to dress herself in her employer's latest "creations" and to impart to them the grace which only perfect forms can give.  Her grammar may be bad, and her temper worse, but she must have the chic the Parisienne possesses, no matter whether she hails from the aristocratic Faubourg St. Germain or from the Faubourg Montmartre.”