Waterfall

Waterfall (pronounced waw-ter-fawl or wot-er-fawl)

(1) A steep fall or flow of water in a watercourse from a height, as over a precipice; a cascade of falling water where there is a vertical or almost vertical step in a river.

(2) A hair-style using long, loose “waves”.

(3) As “waterfall development”, “waterfall management” and “the waterfall model”, descriptions of product research & development (R&D) (especially in tech) including sequential stages, from conception and design through testing and implementation, hopefully to result in a final delivered product.

(4) Figuratively, any waterfall-like outpouring of liquid, smoke etc.

(5) In slang (originally US but now widespread), the action of drinking from a vessel without touching it with the lips (a sanitary precaution with shared vessels).

(5) In the smoking of weed, a particular design of bong.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English waterfal & waterfalle, from the Old English wæterġefeall (waterfall) and cognate with the Old Norse vatnfall, the West Frisian wetterfal (waterfall), the Dutch waterval (waterfall), the German Wasserfall (waterfall) and the Swedish vattenfall (waterfall).  The colloquial use to describe (1) a necktie, (2) a cravat, (3) a chignon (in hair-styling, a low bun or knot positioned at or close to the nape of the neck) or (4) a beard are now effectively extinct.  Waterfall’s synonyms in general use (though hydrologists are more precise) include cascade, cataract, sault (old Canadian slang more often used of river rapids) and the clipping falls.  Waterfall is a noun verb & adjective and waterfalling & waterfalled are verbs; the noun plural is waterfalls.

The construct was water + fall and the Modern English spelling appears to have been a re-formation from around the turn of the sixteenth century.  The noun “water” was from the Old English wæter (water), from the Proto-West Germanic watar, from the Proto-Germanic watōr (water), from the primitive Indo-European wódr̥ (water).  The verb “water” was from the Middle English wateren, from the Old English wæterian, from the Proto-Germanic watrōną & watrijaną, from the Proto-Germanic watōr (water), from the primitive Indo-European wódr̥ (water).  The noun “fall” was from the Middle English fal, fall & falle, from the Old English feall & ġefeall (a falling, fall) and the Old English fealle (trap, snare), from the Proto-Germanic fallą & fallaz (a fall, trap).  It was cognate with the Dutch val, the German Fall (fall) & Falle (trap, snare), the Danish fald, the Swedish fall and the Icelandic fall.  The verb “fall” was from the Middle English fallen, from the Old English feallan (to fall, fail, decay, die, attack), from the Proto-West Germanic fallan (to fall), from the Proto-Germanic fallaną (to fall).  It was cognate with the West Frisian falle (to fall), the Low German fallen (to fall), the Dutch vallen (to fall), the German fallen (to fall), the Danish falde (to fall), the Norwegian Bokmål falle (to fall), the Norwegian Nynorsk falla (to fall), the Icelandic falla (to fall), the Albanian fal (forgive, pray, salute, greet) and the Lithuanian pùlti (to attack, rush).

Two views of Niagara Falls:  Between June-November 1969 (left), a temporary dam was built to stem the usual flow so geological studies could be conducted to ascertain the condition of the rocks and assess the extent of erosion.  After rectification work was carried out, the temporary structure was dynamited, an event promoted as a tourist attraction.  In 1885 (right), the falls underwent one of its occasional freezes.  Usually, these are what hydrologists call "partial freezes" (of late there have been a few: 2014, 2017 & 2019), the only (almost) "total freeze" recorded in 1848 although that was induced by the accumulation of ice on Lake Erie which caused a "natural dam" to form, stopping the flow of water to the Niagara River.  It was this rather than a "total freeze" of the falls which caused the phenomenon.

Lindsay Lohan with waterfall, Guanacaste Gold Coast, Costa Rica, January 2016.

For most of us, we know a waterfall when we see one: it’s a point in a waterway (usually a river) where the water falls over a steep drop that is close to literally vertical.  However, among hydrologists, there’s no agreed definition about the margins such as when something ceases to rapids and becomes a waterfall, some insisting that what lay-people casually call “waterfalls” are really “cataracts” or “cascades”.  To most of us there to admire the view, it’s a tiresome technical squabble among specialists but among themselves they seem happy for the debate to continue and some have even suggested precise metrics which can be mapped onto any formation.

Wasserfall (Waterfall), the embryonic SAM

Wasserfall (project Waterfall) was an early SAM (surface to air missile) developed by the Nazi armaments industry.  Although never used, it was highly influential in the post-war years.  In his memoirs (Inside the Third Reich (1969)), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) discussed both the weapons systems with which he as minister was usually in some way connected and the political in-fighting and inter-service rivalries which hampered their development.  Although his writings are not wholly reliable (there was much he choose not to say on his contribution to anti-Jewish measures and his knowledge of the holocaust), on industrial and technical matters historians regard his account as substantially accurate (if incomplete).  Interestingly, after reading in Spandau prison a smuggled copy of the memoir (Ten Years and Twenty Days (1958)) of Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; as Grand Admiral head of the German Navy 1943-1945, German head of state 1945) who had been a fellow prisoner for the first decade of Speer’s twenty-year sentence, without any sense of irony, he remarked in his (extensively edited) prison journal (Spandau: The Secret Diaries (1975)):

“Where he discusses military operations and the questions of armaments, the book is interesting and probably also reliable.  His political attitude, on the other hand, his relationship to Hitler, his childish faith in National Socialism – all that he either wraps in silence or spins a veil of sailor’s yarns.  This is the book of a man without insight.”

Speer re-invented himself by wrapping in veils of silence anything too unpleasant to admit and spun plenty of veils so appealing that for decades there were many who, for various reasons, draped them over his past.  He wasn’t a man without insight but compared with Dönitz, he had much more guilt to conceal and thus more need of selective silence & spin.

Speer regarded the regime’s failure to devote the necessary resources to the Wasserfall project as one of Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945)  many strategic blunders which, by 1943, had made defeat inevitable.  Having delayed development of the revolutionary Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter (deployed at scale mass it would have been a devastating weapon against the Allied bomber fleets then laying waste to German cities and industry), Hitler took the decision to afford the highest priority to the A4 (better known as the V2) rocket to retaliate against English cities; psychologically, Hitler always wanted to be on the offensive and would later appal the experts by demanding the Me 262 be re-designed as a fast, light bomber.  As a delivery system the V2 was a decade ahead of its time and there was then no defense against the thing but it was a hugely expensive and resource-intensive way to deliver an explosive load under a tonne.  As Speer noted, even if it became possible to produce and fire the projected 900 a month, that would mean a daily bomb-load of some 24 tonnes falling on England and that at a time when the Allied bomber groups were on average dropping some 3000 tonnes a day on German targets.  Hitler wasn’t wrong in predicting the use of the V2 against civilian targets would have an effect well beyond the measure of the tonnage delivered and the historians who claimed the disruption to the allied war effort caused by the V1 (an early cruise missile) & V2 was “negligible” were simply wrong but to have been an effective strategic weapon, at least hundreds of V2s a day would need to have found their targets.

Captured blueprints and photographs from the Wasserfall project's development. 

Speer admitted he “…not only went along with this decision on Hitler's part but also supported it. That was probably one of my most serious mistakes.  We would have done much better to focus our efforts on manufacturing a ground-to-air defensive rocket.  It had already been developed in 1942, under the code name Wasserfall (Waterfall), to such a point that mass production would soon have been possible, had we utilized the talents of those technicians and scientists busy with [the V2] under Wernher von Braun (1912–1977).”

He added that von Braun’s team was employed to develop weapons “…for the army, whereas air defense was a matter for the air force.  Given the conflict of interests and the fierce ambitions of the army and the air force, the army would never have allowed its rival to take over the installations it had built up…”  The difference in resource allocation was stark, more than ten times the number of technical staff working on the V2 compared to Waterfall and other anti-aircraft rocket projects (such as the small Taifun (Typhoon)).  The attraction of the anti-aircraft rockets was obvious as Speer noted: “Waterfall was capable of carrying approximately six hundred and sixty pounds of explosives along a directional beam up to an altitude of fifty thousand feet and hit enemy bombers with great accuracy.  It was not affected by day or night, by clouds, cold, or fog. Since we were later able to turn out nine hundred of the offensive big rockets monthly, we could surely have produced several thousand of these smaller and less expensive rockets per month. To this day I think that this rocket, in conjunction with the jet fighters, would have beaten back the Western Allies' air offensive against our industry from the spring of 1944 on.  Instead, gigantic effort and expense went into developing and manufacturing long-range rockets which proved to be, when they were at last ready for use in the autumn of 1944, an almost total failure [a comment which, combined with Allied propaganda and disinformation, influenced for decades many post-war historians].  Our most expensive project was also our most foolish one. Those rockets, which were our pride and for a time my favorite armaments project, proved to be nothing but a mistaken investment. On top of that, they were one of the reasons we lost the defensive war in the air.”

Whether a mass-produced Waterfall would have been an effective weapon against the mass-bomber formations has divided analysts.  While the technology to produce a reliable directional mechanism had been mastered, what Germany never possessed was a proximity fuse which would have enabled the explosive charge to be triggered when a bomber was within range; instead the devices relied on impact or pre-set detonators.  Presumably, had other projects been suspended and the resources re-directed to Waterfall, mass production may have been possible and even if only partially successful, to disrupt a bombing offensive it was necessary only to inflict an ongoing 5-10% loss rate to make the campaign unsustainable.  Given the inevitable counter-measures, even that would likely have proved challenging but economic reality meant Waterfall probably did offer a more attractive path than the spectacular V2 and given the success in related fields, it was not impossible that had priority been granted, proximity fuses and other technical improvements may rapidly have appeared.  As it was, Waterfall (like Typhoon, Me 262, V2 and an extraordinary range of other intriguing projects) was the subject of a post-war race between the Russians, the Americans and the British, all anxious to gather up the plans, prototypes, and personnel of what were clearly the next generation of weapons.  As a proof of concept exercise Waterfall was convincing and within years SAMs were a vital component of defensive systems in most militaries.

The waterfall motif: Grill on the 1975 Imperial LeBaron Crown Coupe (left) and the Liebian International Building in China (right).

In design, "waterfall" can be a motif such as used for the grill on the 1975 Imperial LeBaron Crown Coupe.  It can also be literal and architects have many times integrated water-flows as an external design element but at 108 metres (354 feet) high, the one on the façade of the Liebian International Building in south-west China is easily the world’s tallest.  An eye-catching sight, the waterfall isn't run all that often (which must disappoint influencers who turn up with cameras ready) because it’s said to cost some 900 yuan (US$125) per hour just to pump the water to the top and, with the downturn in the property market, the building's revenues have fallen short of expectation.  When completed and displayed in 2016, the waterfall attracted some criticism on environmental grounds, water shortages far from unknown in China although the builders (Ludi Industry Group) pointed out the signature feature uses storm-water runoff, rainwater and groundwater, all stored in vast underground tanks.  It may for a while be the last example of exuberance to show up among China's skyscrapers, Xi Jinping (b 1953; general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013) in 2014 calling for an end to what he called "weird architecture".  Mr Xi thinks buildings should be "suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye" rather than "oversized, xenocentric & weird".  Those skilled at reading between the CCP's lines decided the president had called the architects "formalists".  They would have taken note.

On TikTok, a small but active community of those who find waterfalls mesmerizing post video clips.

Crepuscule

Crepuscule (pronounced kri-puhs-kyool or krep-uh-skyool)

(1) Twilight; dusk.

(2) By extension, a brief period of transition between two states.

1350-1400: From the Middle French crepuscule, from the thirteenth century Old French crépuscule, from the Latin crepusculum (morning or evening twilight), the construct being crepus- (akin to creper (dark, dusky; obscure)) + -culum, the accusative singular of cūlus (a vulgar term for the buttocks) from the Proto-Italic kūlos, from the primitive Indo-European kul-, from kew- (to cover), the cognates for which included the Old Irish cúl (bottom) and the Lithuanian kẽvalas (skin, cover); it was related to cutis (hide).  Crepuscule, crepuscle & crepusculum are nouns, crepuscular is an adjective; the noun plural is crepuscules.

Before the provision of electricity which by the twentieth century meant much of the world was no longer constrained in their activities by the hours of sunlight, even other forms of artificial light could be variously expensive, unavailable or unreliable so sunlight was important, socially and economically so it’s not surprising a number of words evolved to describe the transition from light to dark including blackness, dark, dusk, gloom, obscurity, twilight, sundown, sunset, black, blackout, brownout, cloudiness, dimness, duskiness, eclipse, lightlessness, murk, murkiness, nightfall, blue hour, gloaming, evenfall, fogfall & smokefall.

Lindsay Lohan in daylight (left), as the crepusculum descends (centre) and in the dark of night (right).

The most attractive of these is twilight, an evocative word and one to which poets have always been drawn, whether to suggest some sense of uncertainty or the last days of life before the darkness of death.  Twilight was from the Middle English twilight & twyelyghte, the construct being twi- (double, half-) +‎ light, thus literally “second light, half-light”.  It was cognate with the Scots twa-licht, twylicht & twielicht (twilight), the Low German twilecht & twelecht (twilight), the Dutch tweelicht (twilight, dusk) and the German Zwielicht (twilight, dusk).  In the Old English, the form was twēone lēoht (twilight).  The curious word twilit (the simple past tense and past participle of twilight) has long intrigued etymologists.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the earliest known use dates only from 1869 and the speculation is it was coined by someone who found the conventional forms (twilitten & twilighted) inelegant.  Smokefall (the close of the day before nightfall, when fog comes) was apparently used as early as the eleventh century and reflects the use of “smoke” in some regional dialects to refer variously to darkness, smoke and fog.  After thing became more precise, it was re-purposed to describe “the soot which falls from a cloud of smoke” and much later was adopted by those creating special effects to mean “an artificial waterfall of smoke for shows”, the smoke (sometimes combined with a mist of fine water vapor) used to reflect images created by light projection.

The development of languages in cultures of course reflects their environment and priorities although the oft-repeated claim that the Inuit and other nations in arctic and sub-arctic regions had 400 (the number does vary from source to source) words for “snow” are misleading although linguistic anthropologists have explored this on a number of occasions and all have concluded there are at least a few dozen and if the net is cast wider to encompass all aspects of snow (types of tracks in snow, suitability for wildlife etc), then the number is in three figures.  Linguistics is a discipline which illustrates structural functionalism in its pure form: words are created according to need and remain in use if they fulfill a useful purpose.  To most living in urban environments in industrial societies “snow” is adequate for most situations but those running ski-fields need more nuances while for the peoples in arctic regions, the correct description of the type of snow they will soon have to traverse can be the difference between life and death.

Hypergolic

Hypergolic (pronounced hahy-per-gaw-lik or hahy-per-gol-ik)

(1) In chemistry, a process in which one substance ignites spontaneously upon contact with a complementary substance (oxidizer).  Word applies especially to bipropellant (made of two components) rocket-fuel.

(2) Of or relating to hypergols.

1945: A backronym derived from the German hypergol, a construct of scientific use: hyp(er) + erg + ol + -ic.  Hyper is from the Ancient Greek ὑπέρ (hupér) (over; extreme); erg from the Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon) (work), ol both from from the chemical suffix ol from alcohol & the Latin oleum (oil) and ic, the adjectival suffix, variations of which are widely used in European languages (the Middle English ik, the Old French ique, the Latin icus, all thought derived from the primitive Indo-European ikos; oldest known forms are the Ancient Greek ικός (ikós), the Sanskrit श (śa) & क (ka) and the Old Church Slavonic -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ)).  The hypergole terminology was coined by Dr Wolfgang Nöggerath (1908-1973) of the Technical University of Brunswick, Germany.  Few are as linguistically imaginative as scientists who plunder languages at will to produce the best or most memorable words to describe their creations.  Hypergolic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is hypergolics.

The Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet

During the 1930s, almost all research into rocket propellants was undertaken in Germany, the military being interested in missiles with which to deliver warheads against long-range targets and, even then, some scientists were imagining space flight, usually with a manned visit to the moon in mind.  The experimental fuels were classed as:

Monergols: Single ingredient fuels.
Hypergols: Fuel which ignites upon constituents being combined.
Non-hypergols: Multi-constituent fuel requiring external ignition.
Lithergols: Solid / liquid hybrids.

Operational Me-163.

It was only military necessity that forced the Luftwaffe (the German air force) to commit to combat the only rocket-powered fighter ever deployed.  The Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet was powered by a rocket which burned a methanol hydrazine mix with hydrogen- peroxide as an oxidizer.  It offered a uniquely fast rate of climb and a speed in combat more than 100 mph (160 km/h) faster than allied fighters but was hard to handle and the fuel was both highly volatile and prone to spontaneous combustion in flight or on the ground.  In air engagements, the speed which was so advantageous in reaching a target made it difficult for a pilot to maintain contact, the long bursts of fire need usually to bring down the big bombers rarely sustained.  Most authorities estimate some 370 Me-163s were built but only 60-80 achieved operational status and they shot down only nine allied aircraft.  The Komet effectiveness was limited by its high fuel consumption which limited flight duration (the time available in the combat zone less than eight minutes) but the Luftwaffe's records confirm that on some days, such was the accident rate, not even half the little craft even reached operational height.  Not only was it a difficult machine to handle but, late in the war, resources were so strained that training was limited and few of the Komet's pilots had more than a few hours experience in the craft before deployment.  To make matters worse, although in powered flight its speed make it close to invulnerable to attack, once the fuel was burned, to return to base it had to glide down to the runway and of those lost to allied fighters, most were shot-down during landing or on the ground.

Early drawing of Me-163 prototype.

It was another example of the impressive wartime technology developed by German scientists and engineers which failed to realise the possibilities offered.  Had the resources expended on the Komet instead been devoted to improving the Wasserfall (waterfall) rocket, Allied air losses might have been significantly greater.  The Wasserfall was a surface-to-air missile explicitly designed to counter high altitude bombers and used a two-stage system: (1) a solid-fueled booster rocket for launch after which (2) a liquid-fueled rocket would propel the missile to its target.  A glimpse of the future, it was guided by a radar system that tracked the target & transmitted guidance commands and was designed to be integrated with other ground-based anti-aircraft defenses such as flak batteries.  Ultimately unsuccessful because the time and resources needed for development were never available, like the V1 (an early cruise missile) and V2 (the first operational ballistic missile), the hardware, personnel and data which fell into Allied hands at the end of the war essentially saved decades of peace-time work in projects including surface to air & air to air missiles, the space programme (notably the moon landing) and the the development of the big ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles).  Historically, the Komet remains a one-off, no rocket-powered fighters since manufactured.  In action only between 1944-1945, tactically, it was a failure, losses far exceeding kills, but it influenced the next generation of military airframes being developed for supersonic flight.

Gully

Gully (pronounced guhl-ee)

(1) A small valley or ravine originally worn away by running water and serving as a drainage-way after prolonged or heavy rain.

(2) A ditch or gutter.

(3) In cricket, a position in the off-side field (some 30^o behind square), between point and the widest of the slips (or wicket-keeper if no slip is set); the fielder occupying this position.

(4) In tenpin bowling, either of the two channels at the side of the bowling lane.

(5) To make gullies in the ground or an object

(6) In hydrology, to form channels by the action of water.

(7) In slang, or relating to the environment, culture, or life experience in poor urban neighborhoods; vulgar, raw, or authentic and sometimes used as an alternative to ghetto.

(8) In (US) slang, as gullywasher, an intense, but typically brief rain event, the form dating from 1887.

(9) In Scotland and northern England, a knife, especially a large kitchen or butcher’s knife (the alternative spelling gulley).

(10) In some parts of the English-speaking word, a synonym for valley, especially one heavily wooded; a deep, wide fissure between two buttresses in a mountain face, sometimes containing a stream or scree (although in most traditions gullies are usually dry, water flowing only after heavy rain or a sudden input of water from other drainage systems.

(11) In engineering slang, any channel like structure which is available to be used for some purpose such as ducts or cables (applied to anything from computer motherboards to nuclear reactors).

(12) In engineering, a grooved iron rail or tram plate (mostly UK).

(13) In civil engineering, sometimes used as a descriptor for drop-kerbs, gutters etc.

(14) Of liquid, noisily to flow (obsolete).

(15) In South Asia (chiefly India but known also in Pakistan, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka), an alleyway or side street.     

1530–1540: Etymologists have traced several possible sources of the word and it’s not impossible the word evolved independently in different places.  It may have been a variant of the Middle English golet (esophagus, gullet), from Old French goulet (the French –et ultimately replace by –y), from Latin gula (throat) and the meaning-shift in the Middle English to "water channel, ravine" may have been influenced by Middle English gylle, gille & galle (deep narrow valley, ravine), hence gill for some time being a synonym.   An alternative source from The French has been suggested as goulet (neck of a bottle).  The use is South Asia is more certain, borrowed from Hindi गली (galī) and the Urdu گَلی‎ (galī) with the spelling evolving under the Raj under the influence of English.  It was inherited from Ashokan Prakrit galī and was cognate with the Punjabi ਗਲੀ (galī) / گَلی‎ (galī), the Gujarati ગલી (galī), the Sindhi ڳَليِ‎ / ॻली, the Marathi गल्ली (gallī) and the Bengali গলি (gôli), the Latin callis, the Italian calle and Spanish calle (street, lane or path).  The first reference (in Scottish English) to the knife (the spelling gully or gulley) dates from circa 1575–1585, the origin unknown.  Gully is a noun & verb and gullied & gullying are verbs; the noun plural is gullies.

Fielding positions in cricket.  Although some seem now mysterious, at some point all would have made sense to someone.

Historically, a gully was a natural formation of water flows which was usually dry except after periods of heavy rainfall or a sudden input of water from other drainage systems after more remote flooding or the melting of snow or ice.  Over the years the meaning has become less precise and other words are sometimes used to describe what are understood by many as gullies.  The noun ravine (long deep gorge worn by a stream or torrent of water) dates from 1760 and was from the mid seventeenth century French ravin (a gully), from the Old French raviner (to pillage; to sweep down, cascade), and the French ravine (a violent rush of water, a gully worn by a torrent), from the Old French ravine (violent rush of water, waterfall; avalanche; robbery, rapine).  Both the French noun and verb ultimately came from the Latin rapina (act of robbery, plundering (related to rapine and the source of much modern confusion because “rape” was long used in the sense of “pillage” or “kidnapping”)) with sense development influenced by the Latin rapidus (rapid).  Entries for ravine appear in early seventeenth century dictionaries with the meaning “a raging flood” whereas in fourteenth century Middle English, both ravin & ravine meant “booty, plunder, robbery”, this circa 1350-1500 borrowing of the Latin influenced French word.  Dating from 1832, the noun gulch (deep ravine), despite being of recent origin, is a mystery.  It may have been from the obsolete or dialectal verb gulsh (sink in to the soil) or "gush out" (of water), from the early thirteenth century Middle English gulchen (to gush forth; to drink greedily), the most evocative use of which was the mid thirteenth century gulche-cuppe (a greedy drinker).  Despite the vague similarities, etymologists maintain these forms had no etymological connection with gully.  Other words (trench, culvert, crevasse, chasm, notch, chase, watercourse, channel, gutter gorge watercourse etc), even when they have precise meanings in geography or hydrology, are also sometimes used interchangeably with gully.

Japanese manhole covers (マンホールの蓋 (Manhōru no futa)) can be delightful or functional (in a typically thoughtful Japanese manner, some include a locality map with directions) but usually provide little inspiration for those designing wheels.

In the nineteenth century, German picked up Gully from English in the sense of “a road drain, a drainage channel” (synonym: Straßenablauf), the covering of a road drain or gully being Ablaufgitter & Ablaufdeckel.  One adaptation quickly coined was Gullydeckel (manhole cover), the construct being gully + deckel, (an untypically economical construct in German given the usual forms for manhole were Kontrollschacht & Einstiegschacht), an alternative to Kanaldeckel (manhole cover).  Deckel (lid, cap, cover of a container) was an ellipsis of Bierdeckel (beer mat) and also used in humorous slang to mean “headwear, hat” although it was most productive in the formation of compounds with cap in the sense of “an artificial or arbitarily imposed upper limit or ceiling” such as Preisdeckel (price cap), the common synonym being Deckelung (capping).

A German Gullideckel (left), a Mercedes-Benz “Gullideckel” aluminum wheel (centre) and a 1988 Mercedes-Benz 560 SL so equipped.

The alternative spelling was Gullideckel and it was this which was picked up to describe the design of aluminum wheel adopted by Mercedes-Benz in 1982.  The reference is explained by the wheel’s design bearing a similarity to that typically used by German manhole covers although Mercedes-Benz dryly explained their concerns were less artistic or a tribute to Teutonic urban hydrology than a reflection of the imperatives of optimizing the air-flow required for brake cooling and a reduction in drag compared to their earlier, long-serving design.  It was in the 1980s that the greatest improvement in the aerodynamic efficiency of cars was achieved and wheels were a significant, though often little-noticed part of the process.

Top row: Mercedes-Benz C111 at Hockenheimring, 1969 (left).  The C111 series was originally a rolling test bed for the evaluation of Wankel engines ad it was on the C111 that the new wheels (then called “Premier”) were first shown although no production versions (centre) were ever made so wide.  The 6½ inch versions were first used on the 450 SEL 6.9 (right).  Bottom row: A bundt cake tin (left); like the wheels, the tins are made from aluminum but are always cast or pressed, not forged.  A ginger bundt cake (centre) and a lemon blueberry bundt cake with vanilla icing (right).      

Aunger magazine advertisement, Australia, 1974.  Not all wheels use an existing circular product as a model.  A style popular in the 1970s, it was known colloquially as the “jellybean”, “slotted” or “beanhole”.  Later in the decade, “phonedial” wheels (and wheel covers) arrived. 

The earlier design used by Mercedes-Benz was apparently not inspired by any existing product but the public soon found nicknames.  Introduced in 1969 and soon an option throughout the range except du Grosser (the 600 (W100) 1963-1981) until 1986, the factory initially listed them as the “Premier Wheel” (ie the “top of the range”) but in the public imagination the nicknames prevailed.  First informally dubbed "Baroque" because of what was then considered an ornate design, the name which endured was “Bundt” an allusion to the popular “bundt cakes”, a circular cake with a hole in the centre and there was certainly some resemblance.  Produced by the Otto Fuchs (pronounced fuks) Company of Meinerzhagen (near Cologne), the early versions were all painted silver (though not clear-coated) and available only in a 14 x 6-inch size, 5½ inch versions soon offered to suit the lower powered cars while in the mid-1970s, production began of 6½ inch versions to handle the tyres fitted to the much faster 450 SEL 6.9 (W116) and 450 SLC 5.0.  Demand for the bundt wheel option grew rapidly, forcing Fuchs to add a line of cast wheels in the same design, the casting process able to achieve both higher volumes and a lower unit cost.  The process of forging aluminum requires great heat and immense pressure (Fuchs used as much as 7,000 tons of force) and realigns the granular structure of the material in the direction of the flow, creating a more homogeneous and less porous micro-structure.  Forging renders aluminum as strong as steel for less weight and provides a notably higher resistance to fatigue and corrosion but the process is expensive.  Fuchs also manufactured small runs of a 15 x 7-inch version and today these are much sought after but, being expensive, they remain rare.  Such is the appeal of the style, specialists in the US have fabricated versions in both a 16 & 17-inch format to enable the use of the larger, more capable tyres now available.  Today, factories often offer a variety of designs of aluminum wheels with some styles available only briefly but for over fifteen years, the bundt was the only one available on a Mercedes-Benz.

Five-leaf clover: Fuchs wheels on Porsche 911s in matte, (left), polished (centre) & with painted "recessed areas" (right).  The five spoke wheel is a matter of particular interest to the originality police in the Porsche collector community and great attention is paid to date-stamping and paint, it being very important that where appropriate the wheels variously should be polished, painted or raw metal.  The Porsche pedants (who in intensity and seriousness recall seventeenth century Jesuit priests) do not tolerate any deviance from what was done by the factory and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the way paint was sometimes applied to recessed areas.  

Half a decade earlier, the neighbors in Stuttgart had also designed an aluminum wheel.  Porsche had planned a 1965 release for its new 911S, at that time the fastest, sportiest version of the 911 which had been on sale since 1963 and the distinctive five-spoke shape would first be sold in 1966 and remain on the option list until 1989, the popularity so enduring it’s since been reprised more than once.  Distinctive though it was, there were really only two requirements for the new wheel: It needed to be durable and light, strong enough to endure the stresses the higher speed of the 911S and delivering a reduction in un-sprung mass weight significant enough to enhance handling.  The design target was an aluminum wheel which weighted 3 kg (6½ lb) less than steel wheel of the same dimensions.

1957 Volkswagen Microbus Deluxe with 15 inch Fuchs-style chromed wheels (not a VW part-number).  Between 1951-1967, the Microbus was offered as the Kleinbus Sonderausführung (small bus, special version) which was marketed variously as the Microbus Deluxe, Sunroof Deluxe & Samba; the most obvious distinguishing features were the folding fabric sunroof and the unusual “skylight” windows which followed the curve of sides of the roof, a technique borrowed from tourist train carriages, busses and sightseeing boats.  Sambas faithfully restored to original specification have sold for over US$300,000 but on those which have been modified (larger displacement engines often fitted), the "five-leaf clover" wheels sometimes appear.  

Porsche had also used the Otto Fuchs Company, impressed by the foundry having developed a new manufacturing process which, instead of using a cast rim, manufactured it in one piece from an alloy made of 97% aluminum with the remainder composed mostly of magnesium, silicon, manganese & titanium, the technique still used by the company today.  The five-leaf clover design was based on nothing in particular and done in-house by Porsche, the only change from the original prototype apparently a smoothing of the scalloped shape which first adorned the spokes.  The design proved adaptable, the original 15 x 4½-inch wide wheels growing eventually to eight inches when fitted to the rear of the 911 Turbo (930; 1975-1989), the additional rubber required to tame (to some degree) the behavior of a machine which some labeled the “widow maker”.  Later designs have offered various specific improvements but none has matched the charm of the original and Fuchs have continued its manufacture for later model 911s, some in larger diameters to accommodate advances in suspension geometry and tyres.

Top row, gas-burners butt-to-butt: Lindsay Lohan using gas-burner as improvised cigarette lighter, Terry Richardson (b 1965) photo-shoot, 2012 (left) and 1970 Porsche 914/6 with Mahle “gas-burner” wheels.  Bottom row: Five-hob Kenmore gas-burner stove, circa 1950 (left) and a quintet of five-lug Mahle “gas-burners” (option code 975, part number 901.361.017.00, 5½"J x 15", 42mm offset).  The five-lug wheels were used on the 911 & 914/6 while the four lug version (part number 914-361-015-00) was for the 914.

Although the five-leaf clover design never picked-up an association with circular shapes like manhole covers or cakes, there was another Porsche wheel which did.  Produced by Mahle GmbH and quickly dubbed “gas-burners” (an allusion to the resemblance to the hobs on gas-stoves), they were available on the 911, 912 & 914-6 between 1970-1972 and although generally not thought as attractive as Fuchs’ creations, the gas-burners have a cult following based on pure functionality: pressure cast in magnesium and available only in a 15 x 5½-inch format, at 4.3 kg (9½ lb) they’re said to be the lightest 15-inch wheel ever made, more svelte even than the 15 x 6-inch units Michelin rendered in glass fibre & resin for the Citroën SM (1970-1975) (the so-called “plastic wheels”).

1972 Porsche 917/10.

The Mahle “gas-burners” usually were seen in unadorned metal and over the years that hasn’t changed, Porsche owners usually resisting any temptation to have them chrome-plated, a commendable restraint which didn’t extend to many with Mercedes-Benz SLs, SECs, CLs and such, the lure of the shiny apparently afflicting only those of certain German cargo cults.  The Mahles did though in 1974 have one colourful outing, Porsche making a thousand-odd 914 LEs (Limited Edition) models to celebrate the success of the 917/10 & 917/30 in the 1972 & 1973 Can-Am (Canadian-American Challenge) Cup series.  The LE version came with the 914’s mechanical specification unchanged so it was a modest tribute to one of the most extraordinary racing cars ever built (one which routinely took to the track with 1,000 horse power (HP) and in qualifying trim could be tuned to generate close to 1,500) but it was a difficult era (post emission control & pre modern electronics) in which to make street-legal high-performance variants so colors & bundled extras it had to be.

1972 Porsche 917/30.

The plan had been for the run to be called the “914 Can-Am” but while the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America, the sanctioning body for the series) was in principle agreeable, the parties, after some haggling, couldn’t agree on the per-vehicle royalty fee so the bland (and free) “LE” moniker was used; on the option list, the package appeared as M-778 (Can-Am equipment) so presumably the material was printed in anticipation of agreement being reached with the SCCA.  All the LEs left the factory in the spring of 1974 and, in the way Porsche then did things, their specification was close to identical with the odd variation, things like tinted glass or the rear demister sometimes fitted, sometimes not.  The Porsche clubs account for this by the LEs not being produced in a single, dedicated batch (The VINs (vehicle identification number) span a range of 2400-odd) with the parts fitted as cars came down the line, meaning the LEs were interpolated with standard 914s.  There were two basic LEs: some 500 in Black (LO41) with Sunflower Yellow (L13K) highlights (code U1V) and 500 in a Light Ivory (L80E) & Phoenix Red (L32K and visually close to orange) mix (code U2V9), the former picking up the predictable nickname “Bumblebee” the latter, more imaginatively, dubbed “Creamsicle” (a type of ice cream with a similar color scheme).  Rumours of a Yellow & Green combo were apparently an urban legend so the “Grasshopper” was a mythical beast although some 914s have privately been transformed thus.

1974 Porsche 914 LE “Bumblebee”.

All the LEs were shipped to North America for sale in the US and Canada and along with the RPO (regular production option) Appearance Group option (Code 06, fog lamps and centre console with clock and additional gauges (oil temperature & voltmeter) at US$300), the LE package (an additional US$320) included special interior appointments, the Mahle “gas-burner” wheels, a front air-dam (spoiler), front and rear anti-sway bars and, of course, the two unique paint combinations, highlighted by a “negative stripe” just above the rocker panels, spelling out “Porsche”.  All LEs were fitted with the 1971 cm³ (120 cubic inch) Volkswagen-based flat four which, rated at 91 HP (as certified for use in the US) had made the 914 more competitive than when fitted with the original 1795 cm³ (110 cubic inch), the characteristics of which were judged “marginal” in a sports car and the factory must have agreed, the fraction in its claim of 72½ HP a hint every little bit helped.  Few though ever complained about the handling the mid-engined configuration offered and the four-wheel disc brakes also attracted praise.

1974 Porsche 914 LE “Creamsicle”.

The 914 LE was a one-off but it did pass on some bits and pieces used later in the 914’s run (1969-1976), the most obvious of which was the front air-dam (part number 914.503.235.10), listed eventually on the RPO list for US$145 and supplied as a dealer-fitted kit with a pair of mounting brackets (left 914.503.237.10 & right 914.503.238.10); it replaced the standard metal valence.  In common with many fittings of its type, the air dam was susceptible to impacts with kerbs and it’s the part of the LE least likely to have survived the years; while reproductions have been made, the Porsche community notes the quality of the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) units was superior.  Also available in the aftermarket are reproduction side stripes and they exist because (1) some cars were (at the customer’s request) supplied un-striped and (2) there was in 1974 some market resistance to the distinctive color schemes so dealers sometimes resorted to restoring them to what were essentially plain Black or Light Ivory 914s, an approach taken in 1970-1971 by some Plymouth dealers who found the wildly styled Superbird sometimes a “hard sell”.  However, the 914 LE now has a cult following and when one is discovered without its distinctive fittings, a restoration is common although collectors note the twenty-first century’s reproduction Phoenix Red vinyl doesn’t quite match what was done in 1974.