Platform

Platform (pronounced plat-fawrm)

(1) A horizontal surface or structure raised above the surrounding area, used for appearances, performances etc (speeches, music, drama etc) and known also as a dais or podium if used for public speaking.

(2) A raised floor constructed for any purpose (an area for workers during construction, the mounting of weapons etc.

(3) The raised area (usually a constructed structure) between or alongside the tracks of a railroad station, designed to provide passenger or freight ingress & egress.

(4) The open entrance area, or vestibule, at the end of a railroad passenger car.

(5) A landing in a flight of stairs.

(6) A public statement of the principles, objectives, and policy (often referred to as “planks”, the metaphor being the timber planks used to build physical platforms) on the of a political party, especially as put forth by the representatives of the party in a convention to nominate candidates for an election; a body of principles on which a person or group takes a stand in appealing to the public; program; a set of principles; plan.

(7) Figuratively, a place or an opportunity to express one's opinion (historically also referred to as a tribune; a place for public discussion; a forum.

(8) Figuratively, something (a strategy, a campaign etc) which provides the basis on which some project or cause can advance (described also as a foundation or stage).

(9) A deck-like construction on which the drill rig of an offshore oil or gas well is erected.

(10) In naval architecture, a light deck, usually placed in a section of the hold or over the floor of the magazine (also used in to general nautical design).

(11) In structural engineering, a relatively flat member or construction for distributing weight, as a wall plate, grillage etc.

(12) In military jargon, solid ground on which artillery pieces are mounted or a metal stand or base attached to certain types of artillery pieces.

(13) In geology, a vast area of undisturbed sedimentary rocks which, together with a shield, constitutes a craton (often the product of wave erosion).

(14) In footwear design, a thick insert of leather, cork, or other sturdy material between the uppers and the sole of a shoe, usually intended for stylish effect or to give added height; technically an ellipsis of “platform shoe”, “platform boot” etc.

(15) In computing (as an ellipsis of “computing platform”, a certain combination of operating system or environment & hardware (with the software now usually functioning as a HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to permit the use of non-identical equipment); essentially a standardized system which allows software from a variety of vendors seamlessly to operate.

(16) In internet use (especially of social media and originally as an ellipsis of “digital platform”), software system used to provide online and often multi-pronged interactive services.

(17) In manufacturing, a standardised design which permits variations to be produced without structural change to the base.

(18) In automotive manufacturing (as an ellipsis of “car platform”, a set of components able to be shared by several models (and sometimes shared even between manufacturers).  The notion of the platform evolved from the literal platforms (chassis) used to build the horse-drawn carriages of the pre-modern era.

(19) A plan, sketch, model, pattern, plan of action or conceptual description (obsolete).

(20) In Myanmar (Burma), the footpath or sidewalk.

1540–1550: From the Middle English platte forme (used also as plateforme), from the Middle French plateforme (a flat form), the construct being plate (flat) from the Old French plat, from the Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús) (flat) + forme (form) from the Latin fōrma (shape; figure; form).  It was related to flatscape which survived into modern English as a rare literary & poetic device and which begat the derogatory blandscape (a bland-looking landscape), encouraging the derived “dullscape”, “beigescape”, “shitscape” etc.  Platform & platforming are nouns & verbs, platformer & platformization are nouns, platformed is a verb; the noun plural is platforms.  The noun & adjective platformative and the noun & adverb platformativity are non-standard.

In English, the original sense was “plan of action, scheme, design” which by the 1550s was used to mean “ground-plan, drawing, sketch”, these uses long extinct and replaced by “plan”.  The sense of a “raised, level surface or place” was in use during the 1550s, used particularly of a “raised frame or structure with a level surface”.  In geography, by the early nineteenth century a platform was a “flat, level piece of ground”, distinguished for a “plateau” which was associated exclusively with natural elevated formations; geologists by mid-century standardized their technical definition (a vast area of undisturbed sedimentary rocks which, together with a shield, constitutes a craton (often the product of wave erosion).  The use in railroad station design meaning a “raised area (usually a constructed structure) between or alongside the tracks of a railroad station, designed to provide passenger or freight ingress & egress” dates from 1832.

Donald Trump on the platform, Butler, Pennsylvania, 13 July 2024.

For politicians, the platform can be a dangerous place and the death toll of those killed while on the hustings is not inconsiderable.  Since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021), he and his running mate in the 2024 presidential election (JD  James (b 1984; US senator (Republican-Ohio) since 2023) speak behind bullet-proof glass, the threat from homicidal "childless cat ladies" apparently considered "plausible".

The familiar modern use in politics was a creation of US English meaning a “statement of political principles policies which will be adopted or implemented were the candidates of the party to secure a majority at the upcoming election” and appeared first in 1803.  The use would have been derived from the literal platform (ie “on the hustings”) on which politicians stood to address crowds although some etymologists suggest it may have been influenced by late sixteenth century use in England to describe a “set of rules governing church doctrine" (1570s).  During the nineteenth century, platform came to be used generally as a figurative device alluding to “the function of public speaking” and even for a while flourished as a verb (“to address the public as a speaker”).

Lindsay Lohan in Saint Laurent Billy leopard-print platform boots (Saint Laurent part number 532469), New York, March 2019.  Of heels and soles, there is math in the way optimal stability is achieved.

On the internet, "cancelling" or "cancel culture" refers to the social (media) phenomenon in which institutions or individuals (either “public figures” or those transformed into a public figures by virtue of an incautious (in the case of decades-old statements sometimes something at the time uncontroversial) tweet or post are called publicly “shamed”, criticized, or boycotted for a behaviour, statement or action deemed to be offensive (problematic often the preferred term) or harmful.  Cancelling is now quite a thing and part of the culture wars but the practice is not knew, the verb deplatform (often as de-platform) used in UK university campus politics as early as 1974 in the sense of “attempt to block the right of an individual to speak at an event (usually on campus)”; the comparative noun & verb being “deplatforming”.  The unfortunate noun & verb “platforming” began in railway use in the sense of (1) the construction of platforms and (2) the movement of passengers or freight on a platform but in the early 2010s it gained a new meaning among video gamers who used it to describe the activity of “jumping from one platform to another.”  Worse still is “platformization” which refers to (1) the increasing domination of the internet by a number of large companies whose products function as markets for content and (2) also in internet use, the conversion of a once diverse system into a self-contained platform.  Software described as “cross-platform” or “platform agnostic” is able to run on various hardware and software combinations.

IBM: In 1983 things were looking good.

In computing, the term “platform” was in use long before “social media platforms” became part of the vernacular.  The significance of “platform” was compatibility, the rationale being that software sold by literally thousands of vendors could be run on machines produced by different companies, sometimes with quite significantly different hardware (the “bus wars” used to be a thing).  The compatibility was achieved was by an operating system (OS) creating was called the HAL (hardware abstraction layer), meaning that by a variety of techniques (most notably “device drivers”)’ an operating system could make disparate hardware manifest as “functionally identical” to application level software.  So, in a sign of the times, the once vital concept of “IBM compatibility” came to be supplanted by “Windows compatibility” and the assertion by in 1984 by NEC when releasing the not “wholly” compatible APC-III that “IBM compatibility is just a state of mind” was the last in its ilk; the APC-III architecture proving a one-off.  The classic computing platform became the “WinTel” (sometimes as “Wintel”, a portmanteau word, the construct being Win(dows) + (In)tel), the combination of the Microsoft Windows OS and the Intel central processing unit (CPU), an evolution traceable to IBM’s decision in 1980 to produce their original PC-1 with an open architecture using Microsoft’s DOS (disk operation system) and Intel’s 8088 (8/16 bit) & 8086 (16 bit) CPUs rather than use in-house products.  In the IBM boardroom, that at the time would have seemed a good idea but it was one which within a decade almost doomed the corporation as the vast ecosystem of “clone” PCs enriched Microsoft & Intel while cannibalizing the corporate market which had built IBM into a huge multi-national.  It is the Wintel platform which for more than forty years has underpinned the digital revolution and, like the steam engine, transformed the world.

The noun & adjective platformative and the noun & adverb platformativity are non-standard.  Platformative was built on the model of “performative” which (1) in structural linguistics and philosophy is used to mean “being enacted as it is said” (ie follows the script) and (2) in post-modernist deconstructionist theory refers to something done as a “performance” for purposes of “spectacle or to create an impression”.  “Platformative is understood as some sort of event or situation which is (1) dependent on the platform on which it is performed or (2) something which exists to emphasise the platform rather than itself.  Platformativity was built on the model of performativity which as a noun (1) in philosophy referred to the capacity of language and expressive actions to perform a type of being and (2) the quality of being performative.  As an adverb, it described something done “in a performative manner”.  The actual use of platformativity seems often mysterious but usually the idea is the extent to which the meaning of a “statement or act” (ie the text) is gained or changed depending upon the platform on which it transpired (something of a gloss on the idea “The medium is the message” which appeared in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) by Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).

The automotive platform

In automobile mass-production, the term “platform” tended to be generic until the post-war years and was used (if at all) interchangeably with “chassis” or “frame”, the basic underling structure used to mount the mechanical components and add the bodywork.  The growing adoption of “unitary” construction during the mid-century years radically changed the way cars were manufactured but didn’t much change the language, the underpinnings still often referred to as the “chassis” even though engineers cheerfully would point out one no longer existed.  What did change the language was sudden proliferation of models offered by the US industry in the 1960s; where once, each line (apart from the odd speciality) had a single model, emerging in the 1960s would be ranges consisting of the (1) full-size, (2) intermediate, (3) compact and (4) sub-compact.  The strange foreign cars were often so small they were often described variously as “micros” & “sub-micros”.  With such different sizes now being built, different platforms were required and these came to be known usually with titles like “A Platform”, “C Platform”, “E Platform” etc (although “A Body”, “C Body” etc were also used interchangeably).  Such nomenclature had actually been in use in Detroit as early as the 1920s but there was little public perception of the use which rarely appeared outside engineering departments or corporate boardrooms.  The concept of the platform was in a sense “engineering agnostic” because the various platforms could be unitary, with a traditional separate chassis or one of a variety of BoF (body-on-frame) constructions (X-Frame, Perimeter-Frame, Ladder-Frame etc).  Regardless, in the language of internal designation, anything could be a “platform”.

With the coming of the 1960s, the “platform” concept became the standard industry language, quickly picked up the motoring press which observed the most notable aspect of the concept was that the design of platforms emphasised the ability to be adapted to a number of different models, often with little more structural adjustment than a (quick & cheap) stretch of the wheelbase or a slightly wider track, both things able to be accommodated on the existing production line without the need to re-tool.  The designers of platforms needed to be cognizant not only of the vehicles which would be mounted atop but also production line rationalization.  What this implies is that the more models which could be produced using the single platform, all else being equal, the more profitable that platform tended to be and some of the long-running platforms proved great cash cows.  However, if a platform (1) proved more expensive to produce than the industry average and (2) was used only on a single or limited number of lines, it could be what Elon Musk (b 1971) would now call a “money furnace”.  Such a fate befell Chrysler’s “E Platform” (usually called the “E Body”), produced between 1969-1974 for two close to identical companion lines.  Exacerbating the E Platforms woes was it being released (1) just before its market segment suffered a precipitous decline in sales, (2) government mandated rules began to make it less desirable, (3) rising insurance costs limited the appeal of the most profitable models and (4) the first oil shock of 1973-1974 drove a final nail into the coffin.

1960 Ford Falcon (US, left) and 1976 Ford PC LTD (Australia, right).  Both built on the "Falcon Platform", the 1960 original was on a 109½ inch (2781 mm) wheelbase and fitted with a 144 cubic inch (2.4 litre) straight-six.  By 1973, Ford Australia had stretched the platform to a 121 inch (3100 mm) wheelbase and fitted a 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) (335 series "Cleveland") V8.      

Ford in North America introduced the Falcon in 1960 in response to the rising sales of smaller imports, a phenomenon the domestic industry had brought upon itself by making their own mainstream production bigger and heavier during the late 1950s and tellingly, when later they would introduce their “intermediate” ranges, these vehicles were about the size cars had been in 1955; they proved very popular although rising prosperity did mean sales of the full-size lines would remain buoyant until mugged by economic reality in a post oil-shock world.  The Falcon began modestly enough and while the early versions were very obviously built to a (low) price and intended to be a commodity to be disposed of when “used up”, it found a niche and Ford knew it was onto something.  The early platform wasn’t without its flaws, as Australian buyers would discover when they took their stylish new 1960 Falcon to the outback roads the frumpy but robust Holden handled without complaint, but it proved adaptable: In North America, the Falcon was produced between 1960-1969, it lasted from 1962-1991 in Argentina and in Australia, in a remarkable variety of forms, it was offered between 1960-2016.

On the Falcon platform: 1965 Mustang (6 cylinder, left) and 1969 Mustang Boss 429 (right).  In the vibrant market for early Mustangs, although it's the high-performance versions and Shelby American's derivatives which attract the collectors, massively out-selling such things were the so-called "grocery-getters", configured typically with small (in US terms) 6 cylinder engines and automatic transmissions.  The "grocery-getters" used to be known as "secretary's" or "librarian's" cars but such sexist stereotyping would now attract cancellation (once known as "de-platforming).

In North America however, the platform wasn’t retired when the last of the Falcons was sold in 1970 because it was used also for other larger Fords (and companion Mercury & even (somewhat improbably) Lincoln models) including the Fairlane (1962-1970), Maverick (1970–1977) & Granada 1975-1980.  Most famously of course, it was the Falcon platform which was the basis for the first generation Mustang (1964-1973); if the development costs for the Falcon hadn’t been amortized by the time the Mustang was released, the extraordinary popularity of the new “pony car” meant the profits were huge.  It’s of course misleading to suggest a machine like the 1969 Mustang Boss 429 (7.0 litre) was “underneath the body just a Falcon with a big engine” but the basic design is the same and between the early versions of the two, there are many interchangeable parts.  Later, Ford would maintain other long-lasting platforms.  The Fox platform would run between 1979-1993 (the SN95 platform (1994-2004) is sometimes called the “Fox/SN95” because it was “a Fox update" but it was so substantial most engineers list it separately) and the larger Panther platform enjoyed an even more impressive longevity; released in 1979, the final Panther wasn’t produced until 2012.

Lectern

Lectern (pronounced lek-tern)

(1) A reading desk in a church on which is placed the Bible and from which lessons are read (as a lection) during a church service.

(2) A stand (usually with a slanted top), used to hold a book, papers, speech, manuscript, etc, sometimes adjustable in height to suit the stature of different speakers.

1400s: From the late Middle English lectryn, from the Middle English lectron, lectrone and the early fourteenth century lettorne & letron, from the Middle French letrun, from the Old French leitrun & lettrun, from the Medieval Latin lēctrīnum from the Late Latin lēctrum (lectern), from lectus (from which English gained lecture), the construct being the Classical Latin leg(ere) (to read) (or legō (I read, I gather)) + -trum (the instrumental suffix).  The Latin legere (to read (literally "to gather, choose") was from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, gather) which begat derivatives meaning "to speak” (in the sense of “to pick out words”).  In linguistics, the process by which in the fifteenth century the modern form evolved from the Middle English is called a partial re-Latinization.  The related noun lection was from the Old French lection, from the Latin lēctiōnem, a form of lēctiō, again from legō.  A long obsolete meaning was “the act of reading” but it endured in ecclesiastical use in the sense of (a reading of a religious text; a lesson to be read in church etc (ie the idea of something read aloud from a text “sitting on the lectern” as opposed to sermons and such, delivered from the pulpit).  It was a doublet of lesson.  The noun & vern lecture (something often delivered from a lectern comes from the same Latin source.  Lectern is a noun; the noun plural is lecterns.

Crooked Hillary Clinton (in pantsuits), on the podium, behind the lectern, during her acclaimed lecture tour “The significance of the wingspan in birds & airplane design”.

Some words are either confused with lectern or used interchangeably and in one case there may have been a meaning shift.  In English use, a lectern was originally a stand on which was placed an open Bible.  Made usually either from timber or brass (depending on the wealth or status of the church), they were fashioned at an angle which was comfortable for reading and included some sort of ledge or stays at the bottom to prevent the book sliding off.  A pulpit (inter alia "a raised platform in a church, usually partially enclosed to just above waist height)" was where the minister (priest, vicar, preacher etc) stood when delivering the sermon and in many cases, there were lecterns within pulpits.  Pulpit was from the Middle English pulpit, from the Old French pulpite and the Latin pulpitum (platform).  Podium (inter alia "a platform on which to stand; any low platform or dais") was a general term for any raised platform used by one or more persons.  A lectern might be placed upon a podium and in an architectural sense most pulpits appear on a permanent structure which is podium-like although the term is not part of the language of traditional church architecture.  Podium was from the Latin podium, from the Ancient Greek πόδιον (pódion) (base), from the diminutive of πούς (poús) (foot) and was an evolution of podion (foot of a vase).

Behind what is now the world’s best known lectern, Karoline Leavitt (b 1997; White House Press Secretary since 2025) responds to a question.

In formal settings, the US use often prefers podium and one of the world's more famous podiums is that used for the White House's press briefings, a place that has proved a launching pad for several subsequent, usually lucrative, careers in political commentary.  Some press secretaries have handled the role with aplomb and some have been less than successful including Donald Trump's (b 1946; US president 2016-2021 and since 2025) first appointee Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director 2017), whose brief, not always informative but often entertaining tenure was characterized as "weaponizing the podium", memorably parodied by the Saturday Night Live crew.  

Lindsay Lohan (during brunette phase) at a lectern some might call a rostrum, World Music Awards, 2006.

A dais (inter alia "a raised platform in a room for a high table, a seat of honor, a throne, or other dignified occupancy, such as ancestral statues or a similar platform supporting a lectern or pulpit") is for most practical purposes a podium and thus often effectively a synonym although dais probably tends to be used of structures thought more grand or associated with more important individuals (dead or alive).  There's also a literature detailing support of or objections to the various pronunciations (dey-is, dahy-is & deys-s), most of which are class or education-based.  Dais was from the Middle English deis, from the Anglo-Norman deis, from the Old French deis & dois (from which modern French gained dais), from the Latin discum, accusative singular of discus (discus, disc, quoit; dish) and the Late Latin discum (table), from the Ancient Greek δίσκος (dískos) (discus, disc; tray), from δικεῖν (dikeîn),(to cast, to throw; to strike).  It was cognate with the Italian desco and the Occitan des.

A rostrum (inter alia "a structure used by dignitaries, orchestral conductors etc") is really a lectern with a built in dais.  It's thus an elaborate lectern.  Rostrum was a learned borrowing from the Latin rōstrum (beak, snout), the construct being from rōd(ō) (gnaw) + -trum, from the primitive Indo-European rehd- + -trom.  The early uses were in zoology (beak, snout etc) and naval architecture (eg the prow of a warship), the use in sense of lecterns a back-formation from the name of the Roman Rōstra, the platforms in the Forum from which politicians delivered their speeches (the connection is that the Rōstra were decorated with (and named for) the beaks (prows) of ships famous for being victorious in sea battles.

The ups and downs of the greasy pole: 10 Downing Street's prime-ministerial lectern.  The brace of cast iron fittings on the doorstep were there so people could scrape the mud and muck from the soles of the boots before entering the house.  They were in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a common sight because, like most cities, London’s streets often were an agglomeration of dirt, mud, horse shit and worse.  These days marketing departments would conjure up enticing product names for the things but commerce used to be punchier and, unambiguously, they were advertised variously as “boot scrapers”, “door scrapers”, “shoe scrapers” or “scraper irons”.  Paved streets mean the fittings are now mostly redundant although Number 10 has seen many "boot lickers" (one or two rewarded with a life-peerage and seat in the House of Lords).  Unlike a few recent prime ministers, the boot scrapers have proved durable.

The Times of London published a hexaptych noting the evolution of the prime-ministerial lectern which has become a feature of recent British politics, especially since the increase in the churn-rate.  Whether any psychological meaning can be derived from the style of the cabinet maker’s craft is debatable although some did ponder the use of a dark stain for Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) and the twisted plinth of that made for Liz Truss (b 1975; UK prime-minister Sep-Oct 2022).  The Times did however note a few things including the modest origins of the concept in the lecterns used by Tony Blair (b 1953; UK prime-minister 1997-2007) and later by Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010).  Then, the lectern was a simple, off-the-shelf item on dually castors ("casters" in the US and "dually" means each having two wheels, the term borrowed from the US truck market where dual rear-wheels are used on vehicles above a certain load capacity rating although "the look" is popular and often appears on pick-ups rarely used to cart anything) familiar to anyone who has endured PowerPoint presentations and the cables trailing over Downing Street were a reminder of those (now almost forgotten) times when WiFi wasn’t sufficiently robust to be trusted even a few steps from a building.  Also commented upon was that unlike his most recent predecessors who enjoyed their own, custom-made lectern, Rishi Sunak (b 1980; UK prime-minister since 2022) had to use a item recycled from Downing Street stocks (not so bad because in Australia, sometimes prime-ministers are recycled).  Number 10 didn't have a chance to commission a new one because the premiership of Liz Truss was so short (a not quite Biblical "50 days & 49 nights") and her demise so sudden; in her photograph, the fallen autumnal leaves do seem poignant.

Weaponizing the podium: SNL's (NBC's Saturday Night Live) take on then White House Press Secretary & Communications Director Sean Spicer, 2017.

Hustings

Hustings (pronounced huhs-tingz)

(1) The temporary platform on which candidates seeking election to the UK House of Commons stood and from which they addressed the electors.

(2) Any place from which political campaign speeches are made.

(3) By extension, the campaign trail in election campaigns; the proceedings at a parliamentary election; of political campaigning in general.

(4) In certain jurisdictions, as Hustings Court, a court of law (obsolete).

Pre 1050: From the Middle English & Old English husting (meeting, council, tribunal), from the Old Danish hūs- (a house), from the eleventh century Old Norse husðing (hūsthing), the construct being hūs- + ðing (thing) (assembly; meeting), so called because it described a meeting of the men who formed the "household" of a nobleman or king (the native Anglo-Saxon for which was folc-gemot).  Husting is a noun, functioning as both singular & plural, the verb use inherently plural; the formation was originally the plural of husting (and established as the usual form by circa 1500), later construed as a singular but the spelling hustings.

On the hustings

The sense of "a temporary platform for political speeches" developed by the 1720s, apparently a reference to London's Court of Hustings, presided over by the Lord Mayor and conducted on a platform in the Guildhall.  The sense widened first to other platforms on which candidates spoke and, by the mid nineteenth century, to electoral campaigning generally, a use which appears first to have been documented in 1872 but is thought already to have been in use for some time

David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) on the hustings, Criccieth, north Wales, 1914.

In England, the hustings evolved as physical platforms on which candidates spoke to seek the support of electors, a show of hands the usual expression of approval.  It was an informal process in the sense no records were kept of the “votes” but on the basis of the expression of support, a candidate might decide to proceed to the actual poll or decline to contest the seat and reports at the time confirm hustings were often noisy and occasionally violent affairs with more than a whiff of corruption.  The mechanism of the hustings evolved into the more structured pre-selection processes such as primaries and caucuses, the latter the closest (and now the most controversial) in form to the original.

When voting was restricted to a small fraction of the male population, there was sometimes only a single hustings in a parliamentary constituency (especially the geographically small such as the university seats) but were usually more numerous.  The arrangements were formalized by the Reform Act (1832) which somewhat extended the franchise, specifying a separate hustings for every 600 electors, the number reflecting the practical maximum capacity for buildings such as the municipal halls often used for the purpose.  An interesting aspect of the development of democracy in England is that even though voting at the hustings was limited to certain men (the rules varied but involved age, property, income or educational tests and even after the first reform act those eligible were fewer than 10% of the population), it was permitted for others (including women) to attend and view the proceedings, something like the “observer status” at the United Nations (UN), granted to various entities and even at times the odd sovereign state.  The hustings were abolished by the Ballot Act (1872) which made the secret ballot the universal mechanism of election.  The idea of public nomination by acclamation was replaced by the now familiar filing of duly executed and witnessed papers and it was at this point the stranglehold of the parties on the democratic process was effectively institutionalized, their structures evolving as much around the candidate selection process as the actual election.

In 2015, Lindsay Lohan posted on Instagram the suggestion she might be taking to the hustings, running for president in 2020.  History might have been different had Lindsay Lohan been given the launch codes for nuclear weapons.

A candidate’s performance of the platform at public meetings had long been an important part of the electoral process but the advent of photography and later, movies, added new layers, politicians increasingly borrowing the techniques used in dramatic production on stage and screen.  Politicians and their handlers quickly realized the potency of manufactured images and few were as assiduous in their creation as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; head of state (1934-1945) and government (1933-1945) in Nazi Germany) for whom the realization of a talent for rabble-rousing public speaking came while working as a nationalistic agitator in the chaotic aftermath of the First World War.  After his release in 1925 from the far from unpleasant nine month stint in Landsberg during which he (by dictating to some with better grammar and spelling) wrote his autobiography, Hitler’s political career became more focused, in terms of both the structure and organization of the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, the National Socialist German Workers' Party) and his own public image, one footnote to the process his publisher’s decision to shorten the name of Hitler’s book from Viereinhalb Jahre (des Kampfes) gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit (Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice) to the punchier Mein Kampf (My Struggle).  It is a dreary and repetitive work.

More significantly, he worked at honing his techniques of presentation on the hustings, aware of the effects of lighting and camera angle, deliberately he rehearsed movements and gestures to find those most appropriate to use before a live audience, developing an understanding that what was suitable before small, intimate gatherings would lose effectiveness at mass meetings.  He was interested too in the movements and stances which would translate especially well on film, contemporary notes indicating some analysis of the relationship between camera angle and effect.  Hitler’s method of rehearsal was that used by many actors: he performed in front of a mirror, trying to gauge the effectiveness of each pose.  Late in 1925, he had the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann (1885–1957) create images from a variety of angles, better to understand what would best work to appeal to those in an audience which in some cases might be seated in a surrounding circle.  Hitler studied the photographs with great interest and conscious of public perception, ordered the negatives destroyed.

Hoffman however retained the negatives, along with a number of others the Führer had indicated should shredded and published them in his memoir Hitler was my friend, a title which was probably close to the truth, the photographer part Hitler’s inner circle and the one who introduced him to the woman who would for a few, final hours be his wife, Eva Hitler (née Braun, 1912–1945).  Most of Hoffmann’s image archive was seized by the US-American military government during the Allied occupation of Germany as spoils of war and is today held mostly by the US National Archives and Records Administration.  What remained in Germany was assembled as a collection now housed in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library) in Munich.

The technique remains the same.  Crooked Hillary Clinton on the hustings.

Hearse

Hearse (pronounce hurs)

(1) A vehicle, such as a specially designed car or carriage, used to carry a coffin to a place of worship and ultimately to a cemetery or crematorium; a bier or hand-cart for conveying the dead to the grave.

(2) A triangular frame for holding candles, used at the service of Tenebrae (in Christianity (Western), a service celebrated on the evening before or early morning of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, involving the gradual extinguishing of candles while a series of readings and psalms are chanted or recited).

(3) A framework of wood or metal placed over the coffin or tomb of the deceased and covered with a pall; also, a temporary canopy bearing wax lights and set up in a church, under which the coffin was placed during the funeral ceremonies.

(4) A hind (female deer) in the second year of her age.

(5) A grave, coffin, tomb, or sepulchral monument (obsolete).

1250–1300; From the Middle English herse, hers & herce (a flat framework for candles, hung over a coffin), from the Middle French herse (a harrow; long rake for breaking up soil, harrow; portcullis (and in churches a descriptor of those large chandeliers with some resemblance to the long prongs of a rake)), from the Old French herce, from the Medieval Latin hercia, from the Classical Latin herpicem, accusative of hirpex (harrow), a rustic word ultimately from the Oscan hirpus (wolf), said by some etymologists to be an allusion to its sharp teeth but not all agree although all seem to concur the Oscan term is related to the Latin hīrsūtus (bristly, shaggy (and the source of hirsute)).

The verb rehearse dates from circa 1300 and was from Middle English rehersen & rehercen (to give an account of, report, tell, narrate (a story); speak or write words) and by the early fourteenth century the meaning had extended to "repeat, reiterate".  The source was the Anglo-French rehearser, from the twelfth century Old French rehercier (to go over again, repeat (literally "to rake over, turn over" (soil, ground, furrows in a field))), the construct being re- (again) + hercier (to drag, trail (on the ground), be dragged along the ground; rake, harrow (land); rip, tear, wound; repeat, rehearse;" from the French forms herce & herse (a harrow).  In English, the meaning "to say over again, repeat what has already been said or written" dates from the mid-fourteenth century, the now familiar sense (as a transitive & intransitive verb) of "practice (a play, part, etc.) in private to prepare for a public performance" emerged in the 1570s.

The use of hearse to describe the vehicles carrying coffins has become so pervasive that it’s now only in ecclesiastical jargon that funeral displays or church fittings are now so-named.  The funeral display picked up the name because they typically resembled a harrow and it was only in the fifteenth century that the sense of "a portcullis" appeared in English.  From there, use extended to other temporary frameworks built over the dead to be used while ceremonies were in progress while the idea of a "vehicle for carrying a dead person to the grave" came into use in the 1640s, the adoption presumably stimulated by covering structures being added to the horse drawn carts (or biers) on which coffins had traditionally been transported uncovered.

Recent hearses of note

Lindsay Lohan in habit, emerging from hearse in Machete (2010).  The Machete hearse was based on a 1987 Cadillac Brougham (1987-1992).

Between 1931-1979, General Motors' Cadillac division offered a line called the Cadillac Commercial Chassis, a long-wheelbase, heavy-duty platform which was mechanically complete but with a partially built body (without bodywork rear of the windscreen, doors and other panels included on request).  Produced on the D platform (exclusive to Cadillac), the Commercial Chassis was used by coach-builders to create high-roofed ambulances, hearses (often called funeral coaches in the US) and cleverly designed hybrids which at short notice could be converted from ambulances to hearses or used by a coroner's staff to transport a corpse; they were popular in towns with small populations.  The early Commercial Chassis were based on the Series 355 (1931-1935) and the Series 75 (1936-1992) from 1936 and although there were specific modification to the frame, the mechanical components were always shared with the 75 which, used for the big limousines, meant costs were amortized across the ranges.  After 1980, production continued on the downsized platform but there was no longer a separate D platform, the partially bodied cars structurally identical to the mainstream line.  The landau irons (which some coachbuilders insist should be called "carriage bars") on the rear side-panels emulate in style (though not function) those used on horse-drawn carriages and early automobiles (the last probably the Mercedes-Benz 300 (the “Adenauer”; W186 (1951-1957) & W189 (1957-1962)) Cabriolet D.  On those vehicles, the irons actually supported the folding mechanism for the fabric roof but on hearses they are merely decorative, there to relieve the slab-sidedness of the expanse of flat metal.

Funeral procession of Kim I: Kim Il-sung (1912-1994; The Great Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1948-1994 (left) and Kim II: Kim Jong-il (1941–2011; The Dear Leader 1994-2011) (right).  For the latter sad event, Kim III (Kim Jong-un (b 1984; The Supreme Leader since 2011) was chief mourner and is here pictured with his left hand holding the wing mirror, the location of which identifies the cars as having probably been sold in Japan. 

In the West, the tradition is now for the coffin to be carried in a glassed-in enclosure, in effect a lengthened station-wagon, often with a raised roof.  Big station wagons are now extinct so hearses are fabricated by coach-builders usually with a large sedan or SUV as a base but in the wacky world of hearses, anything seems to be possible.  One quirky variation is pursued by Kim dynasty in the DPRK (North Korea).  There, the coffin is displayed on fluffy catafalque mounted on the roof of a limousine, something not far removed from the military tradition of using horse-drawn gun carriages.

The DPRK’s hearse appears to be a 1975 or 1976 Lincoln Continental which has been lengthened, presumably by one of the US coachbuilders with which Ford made such arrangements when the cars were new.  Given the state of US-DPRK relations since the end of the Korean War (1950-1953), the unexpected appearance of the big Lincolns attracted comment when first seen at the Great Leader’s funeral in 1994.  There were three stretched Lincolns in the cortege, all appearing to have been built in 1975 or 1976 (based on the full rear fender skirts and the five vertical bars separating the grille into six sections (the later Continentals used a narrower style)) and all would be powered by a 460 cubic inch (7.5 litre) version of Ford 385 series engine.  The wheelbase on two of the cars had been extended by an estimated 36 inches (915 mm), the other by perhaps a foot (300 mm) but all appeared equipped with fittings which suggested they’d been prepared for the Japanese market and the assumption is it’s from Japan they were exported.  That’s contrary to Japanese law but it’s known to happen, using third countries (usually China) as a first port-of-call, the practice being continued by Kim III who appears to have few problems obtaining the Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royces which now adorn the presidential fleet, despite Western sanctions intended to stop such imports by the DPRK.  As the funeral of the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II illustrated, there is much symbolism in the continuity of use of the symbols and regalia of a dynastic past and should the Supreme Leader die (God forbid), it’s highly likely the Lincoln will carry his corpse.

Land Rover used at the funeral Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021).

In the narrow technical sense, the Land Rover should probably be considered a funeral bier rather than a hearse because the coffin was un-covered, the word hearse applied to such vehicles only after the hearses (framed coverings used in churches) were added to funeral biers in the 1640s.  It’s a distinction unlikely to bother many and the Land Rover has been almost universally referred to as a hearse.

It may look like many a Land Rover but, remarkably, the duke tinkered with the design over sixteen years, the result a modified 2003 Defender TD5 130 chassis cab finished in a military specification green (called dark-bronze green (or GDB in army supply parlance, reflecting the color appearing as “Green, Dark Bronze" in military databases).  Functionally, the most obvious modifications are to the tray where stainless steel stanchions with buffered, laterally placed rollers were engineered to secure the coffin and fitted to a custom made catafalque, for strength fabricated in steel rather the aluminum used for most of a Land Rover’s bodywork.  It’s actually a quite thoughtful design, suitable for parade and non-parade modes of coffin conveyance.  For parades, the coffin can be carried atop the catafalque while for transport tasks, the long, external strap hinges on the heavy steel rear hatch allow a coffin to be slipped inside the bed and thus out of view.  The rear hatch opens not to either side, but down and it includes a centre brace which folds to the ground, thereby bracing the hatch flat and so providing the bearers with more convenient lateral access to the coffin as they slide it in and out.  Cut into either side of the cabin's rear are two curved rear windows, affording the attending footmen extra visibility of their load when it's atop.  As a functional device to be used by an old Navy man, the workmanship is sturdy and well-finished but there’s been no attempt to conceal or disguise the bolt-heads and rivets.  So, it was a bit more than most of the Land Rovers (“gun buses” he called them) he used on shooting parties here and there and while he had long ago told the queen “...just stick me in the back of a Land Rover and drive me to Windsor", sixteen years of mission creep followed.

Hearses by German coach builders, Pollmann of Bremen: 1959 Mercedes-Benz 300 (W189, left) and 1967 Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, right).

Pollmann of Bremen have a long history in the construction of Mercedes-Benz hearses and after some difficult times in the early post-war years, the Wirtschaftswunder (the German post-war economic miracle) which emerged in the 1950s encouraged them to move from utilitarian designs to something more grand and they converted a number of 300s (W186 & W189, nicknamed the “Adenauer” because Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967; chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (FGR; West Germany) 1949-1963) used a number as the state limousine) models, one technical attraction being the innovative, self-levelling rear-suspension which provided a very stable load platform, regardless of the surface, something of some importance when carrying coffins.

The 600 was built on a (lengthened) 1967 short wheelbase (SWB) platform and remains a genuine one-off, the only 600 hearse ever built.  The story (which may be true), repeated whenever it’s offered for sale, is it was originally a sedan purchased by a German farmer (always referred to as Herr K) whose particular experience of the Wirtschaftswunder was the massive capital gain enjoyed when he sold his farmland for urban development.  Happy, he bought a Mercedes-Benz 600 (in champagne metallic gold) for his wife and commissioned an architect to design a house for them to enjoy.  Unfortunately, he arrived home one day to find the ungrateful hausfrau had run off with the architect and, unable to bear to keep the 600 because it was a reminder of the strumpet’s infidelity, he returned the car to the dealer to off-load.  It was sold to the coach-builders Pollmann which converted it to a hearse which seems appropriate although it's not known if the former farmer was impressed by the symbolism of the transformation.  It was for some years used for the purpose for which it was designed and has since been restored by US-based expert in all things 600esque, Karl Middelhauve.

Daimler DS420 hearse, funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, London, 6 September 1997 (right).

Diana's hearse (B626MRK) was a 1985 model, built by Wilcox Limousines and owned by the Funeral Directors Leverton & Sons; it was the last DS420 so modified by Wilcox before hearse production was shifted to the sister company Eagle Specialist Vehicles and was the same car used to collect her coffin from RAF Northolt after its arrival from France.  In 2003, Levertons sold B626MRK after it had for some years been in storage.  It was purchased by an anonymous buyer for £90,000, the somewhat macabre celebrity association gaining it quite a premium over the £3,000 and £4,000 a typical DS420 hearse of this age and condition would be expected to attract.  Inevitably, there was criticism, some claiming the thing should have been donated to a museum but, accustomed to death, undertakers are pragmatic and to Levertons doubtlessly it was just another piece of obsolete equipment to be sold to the highest bidder.  In production between 1968-1992, the DS420 was built on the platform of the old Mark X (1961-1966 which, substantially unchanged was renamed 420G and sold until 1970).  The bulk of the Mark X had in the 1960s proved an impediment to success but it made a fine basis for a limousine and spin-offs such as hearses and for decades the DS420 was a fixture in the wedding and funeral trades.  With the exception of some recent, lucrative forays into the "continuation" business (it's XKSS & lightweight E-Types), the DS420 was the last car to use the XK-six, first shown in 1948 in the XK120.     

State Jaguar XF hearse of the Royal Mews, built for the funeral of Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places 1952-2022).

Elizabeth II was the first monarch of the television age and quickly grasped its implications, understanding better than many politicians of the early years of the mass-adoption of the medium that it used wisely it was a useful tool but that little good came from over-exposure.  Well acquainted too with a feeling for color, light and angle from long and sometimes doubtlessly tiresome sessions with painters and photographers, she sometimes surprised television producers with her knowledge of the technical aspects of their trade.  Her contributions the design of her own Jaguar XF hearse were those of someone who knew her funeral would be her last performance as a content provider for television and probably one which would attract the greatest audience in history.

Accordingly, the queen specified a design which would afford the best possible view of her coffin, regardless of the camera angle, so the glass would be more expansive, the roof was raised several inches from the dimension supplied originally by the royal household, the roof panel above the coffin fully glazed a particular request.  Climate change has affected the UK but it can still be relied upon sometimes to be dark and gloomy and, not knowing what the weather would offer on the day, she had the rear compartment fitted with lighting which would illuminate in a way that, if need be, there would be a clear, reflection-free view through the glass.  The state hearse was finished in Royal Claret, a specific royal-family color (and an official part-number used by manufacturers with a royal warrant) and has a notably large hood ornament, a silver-plated bronze statue of St. George slaying a dragon, a personal mascot of Her Majesty which appeared also on the state Bentley limousine.  The automotive ornaments seem to have been a bit of a thing for the queen, renderings of dogs sometimes observed on her Range Rovers.

Chopine

Chopine (pronounced choh-peen or chop-in)

(1) A shoe having a thick sole, usually of cork, suggesting a short stilt, worn especially by women in Europe in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries and said to have been introduced from the Ottoman Empire.

(2) A bottle of wine (usually Bordeaux) containing 250 ml, 1/3 of the volume of a standard bottle.

1570–1580: From the Middle French chapin, from the Old Spanish chapín (type of high shoe or clog, raised by means of a cork sole), from chapa (plate of metal), the construct being chap(a) (from the Middle French chape) + -in (the adjectival suffix).  The original, the Old Spanish chapín, was probably imitative of the sound made by the shoe when walking.  Dictionaries note a number of cognates of chopine including choppins & chapiney but, as might be imagined, it must have been a word in limited use (by cobblers, fashionistas etc) because there are no entries for the word (or similar forms such as cioppino or choppino) in English / Italian dictionaries of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries; perhaps it was at the time: "The shoe that dare not speak its name".  It's possible the equivalent in Renaissance Italian was zoccolo (familiar as the English plural "clogs") which may come from the Italian zocco (stump or block of wood) but adding to the murkiness, in one English / Italian dictionary, the word chopinos appears in the definition of the plural zoccoli.  Chopine is a noun; the noun plural is chopines.

Portrait de Chopin en Dante (drawing of Chopin as Dante, 1849), graphite pencil on paper by Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), Eugène Delacroix National Museum, the Louvre, Paris.  Inscribed Cher Chopin (Dear Chopin), the drawing is believed to have been sketched on 31 October, 1849, upon the artist learning of the composer's death some two weeks earlier.  It remained in Delacroix's bedroom until his death.

Unfortunately, chopiner is not an English noun meaning “one who makes or wears chopines” but a French verb meaning “to drink to excess” while the English adjective Chopinian carries the sense “of or pertaining to the Polish composer & virtuoso pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)”.  A macabre footnote in Chopin's story is that Hans Frank (1900–1946; Nazi lawyer and governor of the General Government (1939-1945) in German-occupied Poland during World War II), whose rule in Nazi-occupied Poland was an appalling and bloody tale of corruption and depravity, when on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, in all seriousness (as an experienced trial lawyer) offered in mitigation for his conduct the fact he'd established in Kraków a Chopin Museum, something he noted: “the Poles had never managed to do”.  The belated attempt at redemption came apparently at the instigation of Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda 1933-1945) who, although as evil as any of the Nazis, was at least clear-headed enough to understand carrots were in occupied territories at least as useful as sticks.

Defendants in the dock at the First Nuremberg Trial (Frank circled).

Acting under instruction from Berlin, Frank’s regime actively had attempted to eradicate Polish culture and while his methods were never subtle, the worst excesses included mass-murder of “the intelligentsia” (writers, artists, journalists, academics, priests etc) but the governor-general, bizarrely, had a personal obsession with Chopin, based on a genuine fondness for the music and many had been drawn to what been described as its “quasi-improvised” quality; the French composer Georges Bizet (1838–1875) spoke of Chopin’s work as “…charming, strange, unique, inimitable”.  Frank too clearly was charmed but understood the long dead composer would need to be “Germanized” to be acceptable in the Third Reich (1933-1945), taking measures such as spelling his name in a Germanic-sounding “Schopping” and banning performances of his compositions for Polish audiences.  The centrepiece of this improbable Nazi attempt at cult-creation was what Frank called the “temporary” Chopin Museum in his official headquarters at Wawel Castle in Kraków, a permanent structure to be erected once Germany had won the war.  In typical Nazi style, Frank dispatched his (by then well-experienced) agents to loot occupied Europe for Chopin artifacts, manuscripts, letters, death masks and memorabilia, managing to acquire (ie steal) even an original Pleyel grand piano that had belonged to the composer.  Despite that interest, in May 1940 he had made only a token attempt to prevent the destruction of the famous bronze Chopin Monument in Warsaw's Łazienki Park, the 16-ton statue cut into pieces and melted down for the benefit of the German war machine.

The Nuremberg Trial, 1946 (1946), oil on canvas by Dame Laura Knight RA (1877-1970), IWM (Imperial War Museum), London.

Dame Laura Knight’s large canvas The Nuremberg Trial, 1946, now hangs in the Imperial War Museum in London and is one of the most re-produced images from the trial.  An unusual blend of two aspects of realism achieved by a juxtaposition of defendants in the dock and a devastated Nuremberg cityscape (including corpses), the artist did change a few details to suit her didactic purposes, Hans Frank seated not in his usual place but at the painting’s bottom-right, presumably better to show the wrists damaged by a failed suicide attempt.  In court, Frank wore gloves to conceal the effect but these Dame Laura choose to remove.  Curiously for such an accomplished artist, some of the likenesses achieved of those in the dock are not impressive but it remains one of the trial’s most memorable images, despite at the time being received by the critical establishment without enthusiasm.

Sketch of Frank in the dock by New Zealand-born political cartoonist David Low (1891-1963).

For the museum’s opening ceremony, Frank personally selected Ludmilla Berkwic (1910–2005), a fine Polish concert pianist and piano teacher who, on Chopin’s Pleyel, preformed several pieces for an audience of high-ranking Nazis, the recital very well-received.  Unfortunately, Frank’s staff hadn’t dug too deep and what they failed to detect was that Ms Berkwic had since the start of the war being living under false papers because her father's family was Jewish.  That might have gone undetected were it not for Dr Goebbels having arranged for the performance to be filmed and, in an attempt to show how benign was Nazi rule in Poland, distributed throughout Europe on propaganda newsreels.  By 1943 he probably realized that might be a futile project but his energy for the Sisyphean task never waned.  However, an unexpected consequence of the publicity was it prompted one of Ms Berkwic’s jealous rivals to denounce her for having Jewish heritage.  That forced her and her mother to obtain from the Polish Underground new sets of forged papers and, strange as it sounds, they fled to Germany where they could be absorbed into the millions of captive Polish workers.  Hiding, as it were, “in plain sight”, she survived the war working in a munitions factory and in 1947 emigrated to the US, setting in New York.  Frank’s gesture did not make much impression on the judges of the IMT (International Military Tribunal) sitting for the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946): They convicted him on counts three (war crimes) and four (crimes against humanity) and handed down a sentence of death by hanging.  As a trained lawyer, Frank was at least a realist, the prison psychologist recording that when asked his reaction to the verdict, Frank had smiled when answering: “I deserved it and I expected it.”  Unlike the most recalcitrant of the defendants, he seemed aware too of the magnitude of the crimes being tried, admitting: “A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.”  Some of what Frank stole for “his” Chopin Museum was recovered and today, the most comprehensive collection of the composer's memorabilia is housed in the official Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw, established in 1954 and operated by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute.

The ultimate platform shoe

How they worked.  Chopines were a kind of wonder bra for the feet.

Chopines began as a purely functional device; a means of raising women’s shoes and the hems of their dresses above the dirt and filth in which they were often compelled to walk; in the age of horse-drawn transport, streets sometimes were "rivers of blood, mud and horseshit".  It's said the chopines were brought to Europe by traders from the Ottoman Empire where they'd been worn in bath houses by concubines, courtesans and others, the speculation being they were originally a modestly proportioned device designed as a health measure, a means of protecting the feet from infection, bath houses being warm, dark and moist, the perfect incubation environment for bacteria.  As sometimes happens, they became a status symbol with prestige determined by their elevation, the tallest extant examples reaching 20 inches (508 mm) although some historians claim they were built as much as ten inches (254 mm) higher.  Students of the art suspect that if true, such things may have been constructed for shop-window displays rather than being worn because at that height they're really "stilts".  Beyond a certain height, practicality (ie stability) would certainly have become marginal but there's evidence highly stylized examples were worn outside the bath house on ceremonial occasions, the wearer presumably "mostly static".  Chopines were most popular in Spain and Italy in the late sixteenth century and when they spread to England, they were sometimes referred to as "the Venice" because of the perception that was their city of origin, a notion that seems to have arisen because of their mention in widely-read travel journals of the age; Venice was a popular destination for such travellers.  Their impracticality must have made them a niche item because they never became part of any defined English costume or style of dress but whether alpha-males objected to women suddenly appearing taller is lost to history.

Variations on a theme of chopine.

As shoes, they had a short life because their sheer size dictated they be made from lightweight materials like cork and wood although some surviving examples do have a metal framework.  The style, in a less extreme form, was briefly revived with the cork-soled platform soles of the 1970s which had the effect of creating a short-lived investment bubble in the Portuguese cork industry although, as economic theory would predict, as the craze faded a Portuguese "cork glut" saw prices collapse.  The absurdity of the style attracted the attention of writers:

"It is ridiculous to see how these ladies crawl in and out of their gondolas, by reason of their choppines [clogs]; and what dwarfs they appear when taken down from their wooden scaffolds; of these I saw nearly thirty together, stalking half as high again as the rest of the world."  (John Evelyn, diary entry, June 1645)

"By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine." (Hamlet, act 2 scene 2, William Shakespeare, 1602)

"He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a chopine... "(Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922).

Continuing the chopine tradition but with rather less elevation: Lindsay Lohan in Saint Laurent Billy leopard-print platform boots, New York, March 2019.

Shoes have not since ascended to the heights of the chopines but the attractions of elevation have endured.  The lovely elegance of a five-inch stiletto heel of course remains incomparable but while as a piece of design they’re there to be admired, at a certain point a stiletto becomes unstable.  As a piece of math, heel stability can be reduced to about as complex a problem in mechanics as one cares to make it, the significant variables being the heel height, heel-tip area, shoe geometry, the wearer’s centre of mass, foot position, ground reaction force, and the stiffness of the shoe & ankle as an encapsulated system.  So, the “tipping / stability problem” can be conceptualized (even if individual human variations make it difficult to produce a simple model) and the basic idea is that when standing, ground exerts a “vertical ground-reaction force” through the foot; if the shoe is stable, resultant force falls within the “support polygon” (essentially the area defined by the heel and forefoot contact points).  As a general principle, a shoe’s sole being broad and long (thereby distributing forces over a large contact area), what is critical is the heel, a structure with a much smaller contact area.  Essentially, the remains stable as long as pressure doesn't move beyond the available support area.

Saint Laurent Billy leopard-print platform boots from the Pre-Fall 2018 collection.  The large contact area of the kitten heel and height of the sole means stability is achieved but the style does demand some practice because one's "walking technique would need slightly to be adjusted.  

However, the slenderness of the stiletto operates as a multiplier effect, the heel height changes the geometry of the entire foot, not merely the size of the heel.  As the heel’s height increases, the foot shifts into plantar flexion causing a movement of the upper body, meaning the centre of mass relative to the heel changes.  For any given individual, with enough data points quantified, it would be possible to produce an equation that would find a “point of optimal stability” before increasing a heel's height induces “tipping”.  Beyond the “tipping point”, a shoe ceases to be neutrally stable and achieving a static equilibrium isn't possible without muscular compensation or movement.  That can be modelled in software but the practical complication is a human is not a rigid object standing atop an always flat, unmoving surface, ankle, foot and leg continually make corrections, often so minute and instinctive they’re imperceptible to the owner of those body parts.  Thus, a stiletto can statically be geometrically stable yet dynamically unstable.  That’s why heel-tip diameter is so critical in achieving stability and to illustrate that, imagine an example demonstrating not all four-inch (100 mm) stilettos have the same intrinsic stability.  Consider two otherwise identical 100 mm stilettos, one with an 8-mm heel tip, one with 20-mm, the latter allowing a greater movement of the centre of pressure before the ground-reaction force reaches the edge of the heel.  Math nerds can no doubt run the numbers and what they’d find is the intriguing result that doubling the heel height roughly halves the angular tolerance, while doubling heel-tip radius roughly doubles it.  Women used to stilettos of course don’t need an equation to tell them a shoe with an extremely narrow, high heel has a very small stability envelope; the "heelprint" is a vital part of the "footprint".

Lindsay Lohan in Christian Louboutin Madame Butterfly black bow platform booties with six-inch (150 mm) stiletto heel.  What the elevated sole does is change the foot's angle, meaning a similar stability is attained as would be achieved with a 100 heel used in conjunction with a conventional sole.

Hence the frequent use of thicker soles and while opinion can be divided on the look, the elevated platform mechanically is interesting because it allows the heel to be higher while keeping the foot at a less extreme angle; it’s a fudge and not always admired by those for whom the acute angle of the wearer’s foot is one of the most alluring aspects of the stiletto’s aesthetic but if done well, it can be pleasing; it’s not the classic look but needs to be judged on its own terms.  An example of the math is one of differentiation: A 120-mm heel with a 30-mm platform doesn't behave like a 120-mm heel on a flat platform; because of the additional height in the sole, the effective pitch (and thus stability) will be something like a shoe with a 90-mm heel and conventional sole.  Engineers call this the TBA (true biomechanical angle) and in the practical mechanics of the human foot it's of significance because the foot safely can tolerate only a certain maximum angle of incline angle before the ankle undergoes structural plantarflexion failure (where the foot is extended so straight the ankle loses all lateral muscle control).  All this was once a rarely explored exercise in equation-making because shoe designers could tell by looking at design whether it would be practical to wear; they didn’t need the math.  Engineers building humanoid robots did however need to do the sums even though they could, if need be, emulate millions of years of evolution and make feet and ankles more accommodating.  As the recent Humanoid Robot Olympics (August 2026) in Beijing demonstrated, the billions of dollars invested under the watchful eye of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) must have resulted in many correct calculations because what was achieved was impressive (including breaking the world record for the men's 100 metre sprint).  While the CCP surely is interested more in robots for factories and the military than “making a better stiletto”, it’s not impossible a Chinese scientist might gain a Ig Nobel Prize by publishing a by-product of humanoid robot research: the equation for the “perfectly stable stiletto”, designers able to “plug-in” their angles and dimensions meaning the “stability threshold” ceases to be theoretical and becomes just another metric.

Flamingo's Exotic Dancer's boots in baby pink are an example of what can be done if one can cast adrift what's possible from the moorings of what's practical.  Available in calf (left), ankle (centre) and thigh (right) length in a variety of heel and sole heights, there's both a commonality of design elements and interchangeability of components, meaning a high degree of production-line rationalization, making the range economic to produce.  It should be noted "exotic dancer" is a vocational euphemism so the target market is limited but there may be some demand from non-professionals who can see the potential for "home use".

Style by necessity, Paris circa 1942: The chopine's methods of construction and use of materials staged a partial comeback in occupied France (1940-1944).  The sculptured heel both lent style and reduced weight.

Wartime shortages of leather forced French cobblers to turn to more readily available materials such as wood or cork when repairing or replacing heels and soles and the improvisation quickly became characteristic of French footwear during the Nazi Occupation.  Of course, being French, mere functionalism wasn’t enough and identifiable styles emerged, creating a unique “fashion language”; in other words, a fine example of wartime necessity becoming fashion.  Supplies of leather for civilian consumer goods greatly were restricted in many countries during wartime but in places subject to Nazi occupation the deprivations were most severe with the German war machine absorbing the bulk of what was available.  Consequently, French shoemakers increasingly substituted wood, cork, textile, straw and whatever artificial materials could be adapted or re-cycled with wooden clogs becoming a common sight.

French open-toed pumps, circa 1944, Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Constructed on a wooden sole & heel with a raffia upper, the shoe is embellished with a polka-dot ribbon, the only leather component two small cuts for the contact areas of the sole and heel, covered with re-cycled material.  Although a product of necessity, the raffia/word combo does sometimes appear still in modern catalogues and, of course, polka-dots never really go out of style.  So, material supply was a problem but if anything that may have encouraged designers to explore the possibilities offered by materials not previously exploited.  Rather than simply forming blocks of wood or cork into a simple wedge that would have “done the job”, the photographic record makes clear women were wearing raised soles (some quite substantial platforms) and sculptural heels, some as extravagant as was possible within the limitations imposed and augmenting this, ribbons provided considerable scope for decorative variation; in a quirk of the wartime economy, ribbons were for some time among the few materials not subject to rationing.  Cobblers proved imaginative and French commerce rose to the occasion, shoe shops developing a fashion vocabulary: semelles compensées (platform/wedge soles) and semelles articulées (articulated soles) among the coinings.

Semelles articulées, Paris, circa 1942.  The look was soon in vogue.

The articulated creations were ingenious attempts to make wooden soles flexible enough for walking and while it was not possible wholly to emulate the behavior of leather, there were partial solutions, one using thin wooden strips and in 1941 there was the more intricate Smelflex in which the articulation interacted with laminated or hinged sections of wood; with dark irony, the occupying authorities noted the system was derived from a German patent.  In an example of the way in which populations adapt to circumstances, the look became a recognised fashion phenomenon of Occupation-era France and designers made no attempt to disguise their creations as leather, the wooden soles and heels presented explicitly as a blend of “ingenuity and Parisian elegance.”  In an amusing footnote, the shortage of leather and metal did answer the many pre-war complaints about the trend for extremely high, thin talons-échasses (stilt heels) that much pleased the men as they gazed at their drawing boards in Parisian fashion houses but were far from comfortable to wear for much beyond a photo-shoot for a glossy magazine.

Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999, left) with Xi Jinping (b 1953; General Secretary of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and paramount leader of the PRC (People's Republic of China) since 2012, right) (far left), Carla Bruni-Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (b 1967, left) and her husband Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955; President of France 2007-2012, right) (centre left), Marco Rubio (b 1971; US secretary of state since 2025) (centre right) and how it's done (far right).

In politics, the chopine lives on in the form of "elevator shoes" that can "add" as much a four inches (100 mm) to an individual's height through the mechanism of the "built-up" internal heel.  Politicians are known to wear them including Mr Putin, Mr Sarközy and Mr Rubio, indeed the latter's use of the shoes was exploited by Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) who coined "little Marco" as his opponent's moniker during the 2016 Republican presidential debates although that use is in abeyance while they maintain their at least temporary friendship.  As the elevation increases it's obviously necessary also to add to the upper so (1) the trick is concealed and (2) the ankle retains some lateral support; that's why many elevator shoes are really "elevator boots".  Either way, they work best if trousers are cut accordingly; done well, worn by a well practiced wearer, they should be unobtrusive unless closely inspected.