Class

Class (pronounced klas or klahs)

(1) A number of persons or things regarded as forming a group by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits; kind; sort.

(2) A collection or division of people or things sharing a common characteristic, attribute, quality, or property

(3) A group of persons sharing a similar social position and certain economic, political, and cultural characteristics

(4) In educational use: (1) The period during which a group of students meets for instruction, (2) A group of students meeting regularly to study a subject under the guidance of a teacher or (3) the physical classroom.

(5) Collectively (as “class of YYYY”), all students in the institution who graduated that year, the concept extended also to politicians in an assembly all elected at the same election.

(6) A social stratum sharing basic economic, political, or cultural characteristics, and having the same social position; caste.

(7) In sociology, political science & economics, the system of dividing society on that basis; (ruling class, upper class, middle class, working class etc); of late extended to include concepts such as “political class”, “entrepreneurial class”, “creative class” etc; in Marxist theory, a group of persons sharing the same relationship to the means of production & distribution.

(8) Social rank, especially high rank.

(9) Elegance, grace, or dignity, as in dress and behavior.

(10) The members of a given group in society, regarded as a single entity.

(11) Any division of persons or things according to rank or grade.

(12) Excellence; possessing exceptional merit; in informal use, the best or among the best of its kind (sometimes as “touch of class”).

(13) In Hinduism, any of the four social divisions, the Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Shudra, of Hindu society; varna.

(14) Any of several grades of accommodation available on ships, airplanes, trains and such.

(15) In biology, the usual major subdivision of a phylum or division in the classification of organisms, usually consisting of several orders.

(16) In British and Commonwealth universities, the groups into which candidates for honors degrees are divided according to merit on the basis of final examinations or other method of assessment (first class, second class, third class and sometimes graduated (class 2A, 2B etc).

(17) In Ecclesiastical use (early Methodism, as classis), one of several small companies, each composed of about twelve members under a leader, into which each society or congregation was divided.

(18) In statistics, a grouping of data values in an interval, often used for computation of a frequency distribution.

(19) In mathematics (set theory), a collection of sets definable by a shared property, especially one which is not itself a set (in which case the class is called proper).  To please the nerds, every set is a class, but classes are not generally sets.  A class that is not a set is called a proper class.

(20) In computer programming (object-oriented), a set of objects having the same behavior (but typically differing in state), or a template defining such a set in terms of its common properties, functions etc.

(21) To place or arrange in a class; classify; to take or have a place in a particular class.

(22) As “class up” to improve the quality, tone, or status of; add elegance, dignity, style etc.

1590–1600: From the earlier Middle English classis (plural classes), from the fourteenth century French classis, from the Latin classis (a class or division of the people, assembly of people, the whole body of citizens called to arms, the army, the fleet, later a class or division in general, the singular form a back formation from the plural), from the primitive Indo-European kele- (to call, shout).  Classis displaced the Old English ġecynd.  The original use in the late sixteenth century was of a “group of students” (ie number of pupils in a school or college of the same grade) and that in North America became the standard form, enduring to this day.  The Latin classis was most used in military matters (of the army and the sea-fleet) and applied particularly to “a class, a division; army, fleet”, especially “any one of the six orders into which Servius Tullius (sixth king of Rome, reigning 578-535 BC) divided the Roman people for purposes of taxation” (traditionally, originally “the people of Rome under arms” (a sense in use in English by at least the 1650s), and akin to calare (to call (to arms)), thus the link with the primitive Indo-European kele- (to call, shout)).  Class is the standard abbreviation of classification and sometimes is used also for “classical” and “classified”.  The word is for many purposes used as a modifier and there are more than a hundred including asset class, business class, closed class, economy class, first class, leisure class, middle class, night class, professional class, school class, social class, working class. class action, type class, cruiser class, cattle class, class A, classable, class-based, class-conscious, classicide, classism, classist, class warrior, creative class, criminal class, high-class, low class, pseudoclass, ruling class, working-class, class enemy, class struggle and class reunion.

The 19BB (“Barrier Boat”, though sailor's slang is “Boomin’ Beaver”) is a specialized class of miniature tugboat used to deploy and maintain port security booms surrounding Navy ships and installations in port.  The smallest vessels on the USN's (US Navy) active list, the story Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) wanted to rename the BBs “Biden Class” (after Joe Biden (b 1942; VPOTUS 2009-2017 & POTUS 2021-2025)) apparently apocryphal.

Borrowing from the concept of classifications in educational & military use, the adoption in science for taxonomy (group of related plants or animals) dates from 1753 and has since been much expanded.  Dictionaries, perhaps surprisingly cite the 1870s as the origin of class being used with the meaning “high quality”, despite the sense of “a division of society according to status” (upper, lower, etc.) being in use since the early 1700s and the idea in societies of a “class-consciousness” will be ancient although it was only in 1903 the term entered English, from the German compound noun Klassenbewusst.  Special adaptations include the nouns classeme (in semiotics a generic or contextual seme, denoting a group of objects) & classitis (in web design, a critique of authoring stylesheets with redundant and semantically unhelpful classes).  Classy endures as an adjective (meaning “elegant; stylish) but the noun classy (also as clashee & clashy) is long obsolete.  Under the Raj, a classy (from khalasi) was an Indian worker at a port or dockyard, traditionally employed in pulling vessels out of the water for maintenance and repair and returning them to the water upon completion; the anglicized forms came ultimately from the Hindi ख़लासी (xalāsī), from the Classical Persian خلاصی (xalāsī).  Class is a noun, verb & adjective, classism & classer are nouns, classist & classful are nouns & adjectives, classable, classy, classless & classlike are adjectives, declass is an adjective, classed is a verb, classing is a noun & verb, classwide is an adjective & adverb and classward is an adverb; the noun plural is classes

Classy look: Lindsay Lohan rendered in the style of nineteenth century Impressionism by Gemini.ai.  The digital version was based on a photograph of her in a Jil Sander (b 1943) gown while attending the Disney Legends Awards ceremony, Anaheim, California, August, 2024.  On the day, although the environment was not optimized for photography, the light and even the breeze cooperated, the gown’s fabric swishing in a way the Impressionists would have painted, even had the air been still.

In the context of a group of people sharing the same social, economic, or occupational status, the term “class” implies usually a social and economic hierarchy in which those of higher class standing have greater status, privilege, prestige, and authority. Western societies traditionally have been divided into three classes: the upper (or leisure), middle (bourgeoisie) & lower (working) class (for Marxists, the significant classes were the bourgeoisie and proletariat although neo-Marxists have for decades adjusted the theory to accommodate changes).  Most associated with the writings of English-born US sociologist Michael Mann (b 1942), classicide (the construct being class + (hom)icide) describes the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of a social class through persecution and violence.  In that it may be compared to genocide (envisaged originally as the mass killing of defined ethnic or religious groups).  Between the two there can be overlap (such as in the Cambodian genocide by the Khmer Rouge regime in Democratic Kampuchea) but the emphasise in classicide is on the premeditated mass killing of a group based on their (perceived) social status; in that its similar to politicide (in which the targets are defined by their political activity) but in that case, the critical factor was what people do rather than what they are.  Very much at the heart of the French Revolution (1989), classicide was a feature of the “terrible twentieth century” and events able to be classified as such occurred in the Soviet Union under comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in the PRC (People's Republic of China) under comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) & paramount leader of the PRC 1949-1976) and in Kampuchea under Pol Pot (Saloth Sâr; 1925–1998; dictator the communist (Maoist) state of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) 1975-1979).  The related “social cleansing” (the removal of certain classes from certain places but (in theory) not involving mass killing) has the same relationship to classicide as ethnic cleansing has to genocide.

USS Defiant, the lead ship in the proposed Trump Class of guided missile cruisers to enter service in the 1930s.

The design has little in common with the historic battleships of the twentieth century but it's believed President Trump is drawn to the word "battleship" because they were the "biggest warships" he calls the Trump Class "battleships".  The future of surface fleets and their configurations is currently the subject of much discussion on the basis the likelihood of threats from massed swarms of autonomous or controlled UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles (drones)) may render them too vulnerable to risk.  

With machines, “class” came to be used of a “type” or “run” of units of similar (though not necessarily identical) units.  The practice pre-dated mass-production of consumer goods (on the model Henry Ford’s Ford (1863-1947) Model T (1908-1927) made famous) and most influential was the UK’s Royal Navy that in the 1870s & 1880s standardized the use of “class” for designs of capital ships, the convention being the name adopted was the first laid down (and usually, though not always, launched).  By the time of the coming of the upsurge in warship construction that marked the naval “arms race” of the early twentieth century, naval architects in many nations had adopted the scheme of designation.  The “class” referred not to a ship’s “type” but the set of design parameters (dimensions, weight, firepower, propulsion etc) distinguishing the ships from others.  With the smaller warships (destroyers, light cruisers etc), there might be a dozen or more of the class while the big ships (battleships, battlecruisers etc) typically were built in batches of no more than four and the occasional class did consist of a single vessel.  Because it was an “arms race”, ships could be approaching obsolescence not long after being launched and succeeding classes incorporated new innovations and, in the case of the battleships: more of everything, the most famous example being the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought, the first “all big-gun” battleship that rendered obsolete every battleship then afloat (including all others in the British fleets).

HMS Temeraire at anchor, 1909.  She was one of three Bellerophon-class Dreadnought battleships built between 1906-1909, all of which survived World War I (1914-1918) and were scrapped in 1921-1922.

Before navies crystallised the system of “class” warships had tended to be described by “rate” or “type” (first-rate ship of the line, frigate, corvette, etc) but individual names were invoked, phrases such as “ships of the Iron Duke type” or “the Majestic battleships” being common in oral use and routine in Admiralty documents.  So the concept of “classes” had crept in before the system was formalized and, in the late 1800s, it was three factors that encouraged the shift: (1) Industrialised naval construction (steam power, iron and steel hulls and increasingly capable machine tools made designs expensive meaning a run of standardized units was a way to amortize the investment), (2) Serial production (with an arms race in progress, navies were ordering more warships and, as Henry Ford soon would demonstrate, batches of machines with identical (or near-identical) specifications could be produced faster and more cheaply than bespoke creations and (3) Navies were becoming more bureaucratic (as the fleets expanded, so did the establishment & dockyard facilities and, with ships becoming more complex and maintenance intensive, Admiralties needed precise accounting, training, logistics, and doctrinal categorisation.  “Class” already had a long history in engineering (especially in railway workshops) and taxonomy so was the natural administrative solution and at the time, Britain was the world’s leading naval power so, as went the Royal Navy, others followed.

Classes on four wheels

BMW promotional shot of 1964 BMW 1800 Neue Klasse.

The monument in the background is the Siegestor (Victory Gate), located on the on the boundary between the districts of Maxvorstadt & Schwabing in Munich, Bavaria Germany.  Completed in 1852, it was commissioned by Ludwig I (1786–1868; King of Bavaria 1825-1848) to honor the Bavarian army but after suffering severe damage in World War II (1939-1945), it only narrowly avoided demolition.  BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Works) and the company has been based in Barvaria since formation in 1910.

As body types and other forms of differentiation proliferated in the twentieth century, cars were often sorted into “classes”, variously by manufacturers, dealers, registration authorities or reviewers.  The categories used from time to time numbered in the dozens but literal use of the word “class” has been rare in formal nomenclature although terms like “the 1.5 litre class” or “the family car class” were and remain common.  BMW’s Neue Klasse (1962-1970) became well-known outside Germany as the company’s first “mainstream” product on four wheels BMW and although always appearing in English as “New Class”, the literal translation of Neuse Klasse is “new cash register”; given the significance of the range in restoring the company to profitability (in 1960 it was a loss-making concern on the verge of being sold to avoid a declaration of bankruptcy) and ensuring its survival, the true meaning wholly is appropriate.  BMW’s Neue Klasse’s range was neither innovative or especially distinctive but was well-executed and the specification was perfect for the a point in the Wirtschaftswunder (the post-war “economic miracle” experienced by the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany, 1949-1990))) at which a critical mass of the middle class had become sufficiently prosperous to trade in their Volkswagen Beetle for something “a class above”, just as a decade earlier they’d shifted from a motorcycle to one of the “microcars” built by BMW and others that had in the 1950s “put Germany back on wheels”.

BMW 1800 TI/SA, 1965 24 Hour Race, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Francorchamps, Stavelot, Wallonia, Belgium.

The Neue Klasse tag was never used by BMW; the cars always given a designation based on engine displacement (1500; 1600; 1800; 2000) and the range was important also as the ancestor of the 3 Series, since 1975 the model that internationally has been the backbone of the company’s sales.  The model was noted too for it being the first time a “Hofmeister Kink” appeared on a BMW; although the motif had been seen for more than a decade in both Europe and the US, it became such a brand signature it came to be named after Wilhelm Hofmeister (1912–1978), BMW’s design chief 1955-1970.  Although in the 1960s the company never Neue Klasse part of its corporate language, so enduring did it become that in the 2020s it’s its latest generation of EVs (electric vehicle) is now officially the BMW Neue Klasse.  With Chinese manufacturing of EVs seemingly a juggernaut and thus facing troubles potentially as serious those the original Neue Klasse surmounted, the Bavarians hope history repeats itself.

Mercedes-Benz W116, the first S-Class: 1976 450 SEL 6.9.

Unlike BMW, Mercedes Benz did with the release of the W116 (1972-1980) sedans formalize use, the S Class (Sonderklasse, sometimes abbreviated as S-Klasse and translated as “Special Class”) the first instance of what would later became a convention (S Class, E Class, C Class etc).  The new name also encouraged retrospective use, the earlier “big” sedans (W111/112 (1959-1968) & W108/109 (1965-1972)) also sometimes referred to thus although this was never adopted by the factory.  A landmark achievement in its time, the original S-Class was the first recognizably "modern" Mercedes-Benz sedan and its design elements would be carried forward for two decades.

Mercedes-Benz advertising.  Although never explicitly labelling previous models as "S-Class", the factory does like to to hint and frankly, by 2026, the past was looking better than the future.

Despite that, Mercedes-Benz has in S-Class advertising (the model now in its seventh generation, the W223 introduced in 2020) often shown an array of previous generations of its “big” sedans including models like the W111/112 & W108/109 which, in period, never carried the designation and even the 600 (W100, 1963-1981), a model in the Grosser rather than S-Class lineage.  Although as early as 1968, a distinct range of smaller sedans had augmented the W108/109, (the range expanded further in 1983 by an even more compact model), the now familiar nomenclature (C Class, E Class, S Class) wasn’t standardized until 1993 when the alphanumeric names were inverted (500E becoming E500 etc), a change necessitated by the proliferation of models rendering the old system (dating from the 1920s) so prone to ambiguity it has become unmanageable.

Newspapers, advertisers and readers

Before the internet did what it did, for centuries it was print publications (newspapers, magazines and other periodicals) that were the prime vector for the distribution of news, information and entertainment; film, radio and television all had their effects (television notably contributing to the extinction of most afternoon newspapers) but generally, much of the established print media and what was then the “new media” managed a form of peaceful co-existence that was sometimes synergistic, newspaper proprietors and editors quickly expanding their coverage of what appeared on television because that was what their readers wanted, some buying the copies for no other reason.  In those jurisdictions that allowed the same corporation to publish newspapers and operate television stations in the same market, the techniques of cross-promotion became highly refined.

Unlike many mass-produced products, selling more newspapers did not necessarily increase profits; it was a matter of what class of readers were attracted.

Newspapers and magazines were historically unusual because the cover (or even subscription) price charged often would not be enough to pay for the paper alone, let alone the overall cost of production & distribution.  What covered the costs and provided centuries of sometimes vast profits was advertising revenue and although readers tended to think of themselves as buying “a product”, in reality they were the product being delivered to advertisers, exactly the same strategy that works so well for Facebook, TikTok etc.  However, an additional layer of complexity for the print media was that unlike a manufacturer of widgets, increasing sales did not always translate to greater profits.  It’s true the accountants at the widget factory also had to calculate if the extent of additional demand made worthwhile an investment in increased production (ie a night shift, an additional production line or factory etc) but one simplicity was that every dollar paid by a widget buyer (rich or poor) translated on the balance sheet in the same way.  What made print titles unusual was not all buyers were created equal and while the dollars paid by poor people for their newspapers were banked in the same way and had the same nominal value, they weren’t of necessity “worth having” because selling newspapers to the poor (ie of a lower socio-economic class) could be counter-productive for the business model (ie the more you sold to them, the greater the loss).

In the West, mainstream newspapers by the mid twentieth century had become polarized, the “popular” (ie tabloid) titles at one end and the “quality” press (ie broadsheet) at the other.  Because commercial success depended on being able to deliver to advertisers the “right” readers, an industry of market research emerged to perfect the analysis of working out which titles delivered the “right audience at the lowest cost”.  This research was both quantitative & qualitative because it mattered much to advertising agencies whether a title’s buyer lived in the south east, owned two cars, played golf on Saturdays and took an annual overseas holiday or lived in the north, took the bus to a football match on Saturdays and never left the country.  In many ways, they were separate populations and while both demographics might be attractive to those wishing to advertise products, in many cases they’d be different products and in some, exclusive to each.  By combining this data with advertising rates, agencies were able to work out for their clients which media (print, radio, television etc) could deliver the desired market segment at the cheapest rates.  In the case of national newspapers, the segmentation that mattered most was social class and what evolved in the UK was a metric to handle these calculations.  Developed by the industry collective, JICNARS (Joint Industry Committee for National Readership Surveys, a body owned jointly by publishers, advertisers & agencies), because the occupation of a household’s main breadwinner (chief earner) largely determined the spending pattern of that household, social class was determined primarily the their jobs and for this purpose there were six classes:

Class A: The upper middle class (by the mid 1970s in the UK around 20% of all households) with the chief earner (head of the household) typically a successful businessman, professional (lawyer, doctor, chartered accountant etc) or senior civil servant, living in a large detached house or high-priced apartment.  At the time, that class included headmasters of large public (ie private) schools, executives near board level in large companies, leading figures in local government, newspaper editors, senior journalists, professors and Church of England bishops.  As that list indicates, by the 2020s, the composition of Class A shifted a bet.  For the JICNARS’s purposes, the “upper class” (the so-called “1%”) were included in Class A.

Class B: The middle class, then some 10% of households.  These were often people holding “senior” positions who were financially stable and living lives of “quiet respectability” and although with neither the incomes or accumulated wealth (or, not infrequently, debt) of the Class A members, the significance was that in manners and cultural matters, their tastes and habits often overlapped, meaning their attention was sought by the same advertisers.  The Class B membership included vicars, headmasters of smaller schools, senior executive officers in the civil service, university lecturers, matrons of smaller hospitals, pharmacists, directors of smaller companies and qualified librarians in charge of smaller libraries.

Class C1: Just over 15% of households, the C1 families were the lower middle class, trades-people (employed or self-employed) and non-manual workers, “white-collar” workers such as articled clerks, owners of small businesses, clerks, typists, telephonists, curates and nurses.  A recent trend has been a marginalisation of the white collar component of the C1s by a number of factors, most obviously technology although this is spreading upwards to B and even A more than downwards.  Of the trades, despite recent rises in their economic value to advertisers, they’re considered culturally static so while their purchasing power has increased, they don’t identify with AB tastes.

Class C2: Intriguingly, many of those in Class C2 (about a quarter of households) enjoyed higher incomes than many in the C1 cohort and this was because, as the skilled working class, their economic value was higher because they contributed directly (and measurably) to productivity in a way an accountant’s clerk did not.  The C2 membership included foremen, fitters, knitters, plumbers, shop assistants with supervisory responsibilities, pastry-cooks and prison officers.

Class D: Although it probably wasn’t true statistically, for the purposes of the JICNARS, those is Class D were considered all manual workers, semi-skilled or unskilled; that didn’t mean the latter had no skills, it meant to an economist those skills could be quickly learned and required no formal education or structured training.  Some 20% of households were in Class D and typical employment profiles would include labourers, fishermen, bus conductors, traffic wardens and window cleaners.

Class E: Some 10% of households, the Es operated at the “lowest level of subsistence” and survived through precarious, low-paid employment, petty crime and transfer payments; they would now be classed as “welfare-dependent”.  Although the membership was diverse, the JICNARS for illustrative purposes listed migrants, those with substance abuse issues, families of old age pensioners, widows and those dependent on social security.

Predictably, the 30%-odd of the population in Class A & Class B tended to buy the “quality” papers, titles like the Financial Times, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian collectively drawing almost half their readership from the ABs, this declining to around 40% for the Sunday editions.  What this affluent readership did was attract high-priced advertising, enabling the titles to remain profitable despite a low cover price and circulations that were tiny compared with the mass-market tabloids.  Of note too is that it was these publications (along with The Economist (a newspaper that looks like a glossy magazine) that were most read by decision makers in government and industry.  So, it was the quality newspapers that tended to provide informed discussion on public issues, political affairs, business and the arts; although the record of their influence on public policy was patchy, what they tended to do was “set the agenda”, another attraction for advertisers.

What made the pre-internet newspaper business unusual was that there was sometimes a conscious attempt to reduce sales, a discussion usually not heard in boardrooms or among members of management committees.  In 1968, The Times had embarked on a major promotional drive and, using conventional techniques, sales indeed did spike and that was most pleasing until the research revealed some 60% of its readers were now in the undesirable C1, C2, D & E classes, something the advertising agencies to quick to notice.  Accordingly, the paper’s editorial direction shifted back, ensuring as many as possible of the intruders were shed and the bias towards the AB was restored.  Profitability was thus also improved because with each copy of The Times sold at a nominal loss (based on the cost of production & distribution), selling more made sense only if the rising readership attracted more high-value advertising.  With the less desired classes forming a majority of the leadership, not only were the traditional advertisers less attracted, those seeking to reach the C1, C2 and D classes (few except tobacco companies and their ilk chased the E class) were not willing to pay the high-rates charged by the Times.  The Times did not repeat the mistake and that different news appeared in different papers to attract different audiences was hardly surprising for as Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) put it in Scoop (1938): “They all have different policies, so of course they have to give different news.”

Nye Bevan and his wife Jennie Lee (1904–1988), London, 1934.

Waugh’s point of course can be considered as a matter of both cause and effect because whatever might happen on a publications profit & loss statement, there are also political consequences.  Until scared off, more than one government in the post-war years proposed increasing public expenditure in a way that would increase the burden only on taxpayers earning 2-3 times the national average and, without exception, these have been criticized by the “quality” press, usually on the basis not of such a fiscal package being “unfair” but that it would “alienate the political centre”.  As the JICNARS understood, in electoral terms, this was highly improbable because only about 10-12% of the population would lose out in such a redistribution but that sliver of the electorate was in the AB Class at the centre of the quality press’s readership and this dictated the response.  In his book In Place of Fear (1952), the Welsh Labour Party politician Aneurin "Nye" Bevan (1897–1960) pondered: “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”  As political parties came to understand, it was possible to convince the poor to vote against their own economic interests if the “culture wars” dangled before their eyes could be made to seem enough of a threat, thus the weaponization in the US of guns, God, pickup trucks, trans rights, abortion, gay marriage and much else.

Tactile

Tactile (pronounced tak-til or tak-tahyl)

(1) Of, pertaining to, endowed with, or affecting the sense of touch.

(2) Perceptible to the touch; tangible.

(3) Capable of being touched; tangible (archaic).

1605–1615: From the Middle French tactile, from the Latin tāctilis (tangible), from tāctus, past participle of tangere (to touch)), from the primitive Indo-European root tag (to touch; to handle).  The construct was tact(us) + ile.  The –ile suffix was from the Latin –īlis (neuter -ile, comparative -ilior, superlative -illimus or -ilissimus; the third-declension two-termination suffix), from the Proto-Italic -elis, from the primitive Indo-European -elis, from -lós.  It was used to form an adjective noun of relation, frequently passive, to the verb or root.  The meaning "of or pertaining to the sense of touch" is attested from the 1650s.  Tactile is an adjective, tactilize is a verb, tactility is a noun and tactilely is an adverb; the noun plural is tactilities.  In specialized use, the word “tactile” is an element in many words:

Audiotactile: (relating to the senses of hearing and touch).

Chemotactile: (the ability of an organism to sense changes to its chemical environment).

Electrotactile: (composed of an array of small electrodes that provide stimulation to the skin).

Entactogen: (the quality of combining mechanosensory (of or pertaining to the sensing of mechanical stimuli) with tactility).

Mechanotactile: (mechanosensory (of or pertaining to the sensing of mechanical stimuli) and tactile).

Orotactile: (of or pertaining to the sense of touch in mouth).

Pedotactile: (that can be felt by the feet).

Pneumotactile: (relating to the skin's ability to feel a pneumatic pulse).

Protactile: (a dialect of ALS (American Sign Language) that communicates with touch).

Tactilometry: (The measurement of touch or of vibration (change in dimension) (tactilometric the adjective).

Teletactile: (relating to the transmission of physical touch over a telecommunication network (teletactility the noun).

Thermotactile: (Sensitive to heat and to touch (but distinct from thermomreactive)).

Visuotactile: (relating to perception by vision and touch).

Vibrotactile: (of, pertaining to, or using vibrotaction (the dynamic response of tactile nerve endings in the skin to vibration)).

Tactile Paving

Examples of tactile pavers.

Tactile graphics (the singular form does exist but is rare and restricted to technical use (software manuals and such)) are raised-surface representations of images, maps, graphs and diagrams designed for individuals who are blind or visually impaired, enabling them to explore (using touch) anything able to be represented thus (physical topography, complex STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) content (cabling diagrams the classic example) spatial layouts, art etc).  Tactile paving was a practical application of tactile graphics, describing a system of textured ground surface indicators (constructed typically using a brightly colored rubberized plastic) permanently affixed to stairs, railway station platforms, the point at which a sidewalk (footpath) ends (the so-called “curb-cut”) and access to a pedestrian road-crossing begins etc.  The concept first appeared in Japan in the mid-1960s and was based on 点字ブロック (tenji (the name for Japanese braille, a system of writing in which letters and some combinations of letters are represented by raised dots arranged in three or four rows of two dots each and are read by the blind and partially sighted using the fingertips; the system was named after French educator Louis Braille (1809–1852))).  Something like “braille writ large” the “tactile paving tiles” are there as a kind of “signage” for the blind or visually-impaired, designed specifically easily to be detectable by shod-feet or a hand-held cane; the system was a major contribution to making the built environment more easily negotiable.  Although the shapes (“blister”, “lozenge”, “ribbed”, “cycleway”, “directional”, “stair” etc) are not quite internationally standardized, within jurisdictions, there is one for railway platforms, one for stairs, one for curb-cuts etc, the latter of importance because there’s sometimes no grade-change between a sidewalk and roadway along which motorized vehicles pass.

Tactile Necrophilia

Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices (2008) by Professor Anil Aggrawal.

In psychiatry, “tactile necrophilia” (a condition in which subjects sexually are aroused by touching or stroking a corpse, without engaging in intercourse) is one of the ten classifications of necrophilia defined by Indian forensic psychologist Professor Anil Aggrawal (b 1956), author of the 438 page Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices (2008), described in a review published in the AAJFC (American Academy Journal of Forensic Sciences) as a “quite remarkable book” and an “authoritative text” in which “Dr Aggrawal deftly brings to bear his 25 years of interest and knowledge of sexual deviancy”.  Within the profession, Dr Aggrawal is considered the leading authority on necrophilia and, as well as being a text book for the profession, Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices is also a valuable contribution to the evolution of the history of how “normal” & “abnormal” have at various times been constructed, one reviewer noting “a enjoyable aspect of this book is Dr Aggrawal’s grasp of ancient references concerning the paraphilias in both religious and historical texts” while another was pleased by the inclusion of “minor aberrant behavior such as coprolalia and troilism.”

The ten classifications are not listed in either the APA’s (American Psychiatric Association) DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) nor the WHO’s (World Health Organization) ICD (International Classification of Diseases), and in the latest edition of the DSM (DSM-5-TR, 2022), a recurrent, intense sexual interest in corpses is classified as diagnosable under “Other Specified Paraphilic Disorder (necrophilia)” when “the cause of marked distress or impairment in important areas of functioning.”  Intriguingly, Professor Aggrawal list his ten headings in order of “increasing severity” meaning an “Exclusive Necrophiliac” (Class X; Those for whom sex with a corpse is an exclusive interest (ie they do not respond to a living partner)) is defined as a more severe condition than that of the “Homicidal Necrophiliac” (Class IX; Necrosadists, those who commit murder in order to have sex with the victim).  Presumably the notion of “severity” explored by Professor Aggrawal is based on a scale where the “total exclusion” of sex with a living human is the “terminal state” and one can see his point but it’s suspected most non-clinicians would regard (certainly on public policy grounds) someone who murders their sexual partners to be a “more severe” state of mental disorder than one who enjoys partners who met their end by other means (acts of God, trauma, murdered by the Freemasons, fatal illness etc).  Still, Professor Aggrawal is thought the world’s “leading authority on necrophilia” so we should defer to his expertise; it should be added his ten categories are to be digested while remembering he is a practicing forensic psychologist, his findings empirical and not theoretical:

Class I: Role players (Those aroused when pretending their partner is dead during sexual activity).

Class II: Romantic necrophiliacs (The bereaved people who remain attached to their dead lover's body).

Class III: Necrophiliac fantasizers (Those who fantasize about necrophilia, but do not physically interact with corpses).

Class IV: Tactile necrophiliacs (Those aroused by touching or stroking a corpse, without engaging in intercourse.

Class V: Fetishistic necrophiliacs (Those who remove objects or body parts from a corpse for sexual fetishes, without engaging in intercourse).

Class VI: Necromutilomaniacs (Those who derive pleasure from mutilating a corpse while masturbating, without engaging in intercourse).

Class VII: Opportunistic necrophiliacs (Those who usually have no interest in necrophilia but avail themselves of the opportunity when presented).

Class VIII: Regular necrophiliacs (Those who preferentially (but not exclusively) have intercourse with the dead).

Class IX: Homicidal necrophiliacs (Necrosadists; those who murder someone to have sex with the victim).

Class X: Exclusive necrophiliacs (Those for whom sex with a corpse is an exclusive interest (ie they do not respond to a living partner)).

Tactility's finest hour: The IBM Model M keyboard.

A triumph of modern industrial design but, in a way, a work of art: 1992 IBM (Blue Label) Model M keyboard.

In the few decades computing has been a mainstream activity, in the layers, at various points, such as been the variety of hardware, operating systems, languages and software, often there's been no general agreement about what’s best in any particular field but most with any exposure to the IBM Model M keyboard agree it’s probably the finest keyboard ever.  Even those not attracted to the tactility that is its most obvious characteristic (and there are those gentle souls who prefer a “squishy” to a “clicky” keyboard) will usually concede the build quality is exceptional, compared especially to some of the flimsy devices in recent years bundled with systems.  It shouldn’t be surprising IBM was able at scale to build something like the Model M keyboard given the company’s decades of experience in engineering such constructions and there are Model M nerds prepared to believe all those years were but preparation for what was required to make the Model M a landmark in tactility.

1973 IBM Selectric with three elements (golfballs).  The striking red was quite rare, staid corporations preferring blue, green and beige. 

IBM (International Business Machines) began in New York in 1888 (adopting the initialism in 1924), its early core-business mechanical “tabulating systems” for accounting and time-keeping and, by the 1930s, some of the mechanical engineering used in these systems was applied to typewriter technology after it acquired the tools, patents and production facilities of Electromatic Typewriters of Rochester.  The first result of an intense R&D (research & development) effort was released in 1935 as the Model 01 IBM Electric Typewriter, the machine that became the first really successful electric typewriter in the US and the beginning of a line which, by 1961, had evolved into the IBM Selectric, famous for its “element” that the rest of the world came to call the “golfball”.  The almost spherical “golfball” (it appears also in some IBM documents as “typeball”) contained the impressions of the letters that struck the ribbon and was interchangeable with others using different font sets.  That was not a new idea, other manufacturers using the principle of interchangeability in the late nineteenth century but with “type wheels” that were larger and tended to be fragile; the three-dimensional “golfball” was both more robust and, having to travel a smaller distance per key stroke, permitting a faster typing rate.  It was with the Selectric the evolution of what became the Model M keyboard really began.

1984 IBM Model F keyboard; the IBM mouse of the era was as ghastly to use as the look suggests.

Though the unit on the 1935 Model 01 Typewriter may be thought the Model M's LCA (last common ancestor), it's the Model F that deserves the honor of parenthood.  The first version of the definitively tactile, stand-alone IBM keyboard was the Model 14 which, although most associated with the original IBM PC-1 released in August 1981, had actually debuted with the System/23 Datamaster (1981-1985), a short-lived corporate workstation that proved a dinosaur, unable to adapt to the strange new world created by the unexpected success of the PC-1 (those in the IBM boardroom as surprised as any).  The adoption by corporations and SMBs (small & medium business) of the PC-1 and its successors was also ultimately the death knell for the earlier 6580 Displaywriter (1980-1986), a hefty and expensive dedicated word-processor (the impact printer usually bundled with the thing so loud most put it in an insulated shroud or a separate room); like the System/23 in the battle of "survival of the fittest", it proved unable to adapt, crowded out of the ecosystem by the rapidly expanding niche created by the PC-1.  In an era when "to be first" was often a great marketplace advantage (enabling critical mass to be gained), the Datamaster's introduction five weeks ahead of the PC-1 wasn't enough for the species to survive although it's Model 14 keyboard was shared with the upstart from which not much had been expected.  The Model 14 debuted with an 83 key layout and the nerdiest of nerds still extol its technical superiority over the Model M in that it uses a buckling spring over a capacitive PCB (printed circuit board) rather than the later membrane.  The Model F remained in production until 1985 (although volumes (by both IBM and Lexmark) had slowed) but it was the platform for innovations such as the revised layout to accommodate the PC-AT's protocols and the availability of specialized models with provision for magnetic stripe readers & inbuilt LCD readouts (both with cable-interfaces to external devices) and as few as 50 or as many as 127 keys (the latter industry-specific).

Custom IBM Model F keyboard with LED module.

Model F aficionados can be a snobby crowd, proud of pointing out even IBM admitted one of the design objectives with the Model M was to reduce manufacturing costs but the attraction is real, the intricacies of the Model F intriguing and their labour-intensive production process does mean nothing like them is likely again to be made.  The internal assembly uses two curved metal back-plates and the PCB is flexible, thus also curved when attached to the back-plate and while just about every other keyboard's curves are simulated by the molding of the keycap profiles, the Model F's curves were integral to the frame, thus allowing all keycaps to be the same shape and size, a great advantage for those who like to tinker and customize.  While freaks customizing keyboards are less frequently found than once they were, they exist still in dark rooms living on pizza and Coca-Cola.  Snobbery or not, the freaks do (up to a point) have a point because the mechanical advantages are real.  The capacitive design is superior, requiring a lighter actuation force, delivering a crisper feel and slightly sharper feedback; it’s also more robust, IBM guaranteeing each key with a MTBF (mean time between failure) of over 100 million key-presses, a reasonable life even for the most productive trolls.  The switch from PCBs to membranes meant these characteristics were to some degree toned down in order to lower manufacturing costs although the MTBF was still rated an impressive 80 million, even a Marcel Proust (1871-1922) unlikely to have worn one out in his lifetime.

IBM user Lindsay Lohan in Life-Size (2000, Walt Disney Television).

Pace the freaks but the Model M is preferable, if for no other reason than simply because it (more-or-less) standardized the core keyboard layout (most others have long conformed) and in use, the tactility is little different from its predecessor.  Regarding the layout, the case can be made that the Model F’s location of the function keys to the left may have made sense but the planet has settled on the Model M's layout and humans adapted.  Introduced in 1985 with the 3161 terminal, the PC-compatible version appeared in 1987 when it was included with the PS/2 range introduced with the OS/2 operating system and MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) bus.  The Model M is a solid (9 lb (4 kg)) tactile experience that feels as solid (and "clicky") as the Model F and users typically have a long time to become accustomed to that feel; the keyboards, some now over 40 years old, appearing not to have a life expectancy, many in continuous use for decades and a servicing ecosystem exists should any parts need to be replaced although it’s said rectifying the consequences of spills (of coffee, red wine, G&Ts etc) is a more common request and, as a general principle, the higher a liquid's sugar content, the more difficult the task.  Black tea or coffee with no sugar is, for many reasons, recommended, keyboard hygiene included.  The best source for the tactile status symbols is ClickyKeyboards.

United States Patent # 4,118,611 Buckling Spring torsional snap actuator. Harris, 1978:

It will be appreciated with regard to the figures that depression of the key button 1 moves the key button and its stem 6 into the housing 3, creating longitudinal compression and lateral deflection of the helical compression spring 2. An initial counter-clockwise moment is exerted on the rocker member 4 which is approximately equal to the force F times the distance between the pivot point 8 of the rocking member 4 and the center line of the spring. The upper end of the helical spring 2 is held squarely against the key button 1 by a clockwise moment created by a force equal to approximately F times the diameter of the spring divided by two. The rocker member 4 will initially be held firmly over the contacts 5A and 5B. As the lateral motion of the center of the helical compression spring 2 increases, both the top and bottom reaction moments in spring 2 are decreased because F is transmitted through the center section of spring 2. Shortly after these moments approach 0, the rocker member rocks to a position squarely over contacts 5A and 5C and the top of spring 2 rocks about the right hand edge of its topmost coil. The constraints upon the depression column spring have changed from an initial end clamped condition to an end clamped-pinned condition. This sudden change provides the tactile response of the key and is accompanied by a sudden rocking action of the rocker member 4 which creates an acoustic feedback as well.

Evolution of the IBM Keyboard layout: Model M, 3161 Terminal (1985) & PS/2 (1987) (top), Model F, PC-AT (1984) (centre) and Model F, PC & XT, (1981) (bottom).

The "buckling spring torsional snap actuator" is the core of the Model M’s charm.  Unlike mechanical switches that are depressed straight down like plungers, the Model M has springs under each key that contract, snap flat, or "buckle," and then spring back into place when released.  This provides the audible “click” so associated with the model and which some don’t like but for those who become accustomed to typing on one, it’s hard to go back to anything else; they have the feel of a pre-modern (circa 1980 and earlier) Mercedes-Benz.  Because of the physicality, typing on a Model M is a tangible experience; like a typewriter, the tactility and the feedback of the click gives every letter a physical presence.

NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) LSLF (Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility).

The LSLF is NASA's repository and laboratory facility at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston (named after Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; VPOTUS 1961-1963 and POTUS 1963-1969 who, as VPOTUS was made titular head of the US space programme, the centrepiece of which was the Apollo project that produced the manned landing on the Moon in July 1969).  Since 1979, the LSLF has housed geologic samples collected from the lunar surface during the Apollo missions (1969-1972).  The facility preserves in a secure vault much of the 842 lb (382 kg) of rocks, dust and such returned to Earth as well as some other material and the associated data records.  The facility also contains "clean-room" laboratories so samples can be processed and studied in a contamination-free environment.

A "NASA office", circa 1989 (given the likely specification of the PC, probably not an engineer's desk), the Model M keyboard doubtlessly still functioning perfectly, the keys as tactile as the day it was built.  The "Luna Trash" bin is a nice piece of nerd humor. 

The LSLF also includes (as a "static exhibit", left), a replica of a room in the Space Center as it was in the late 1980s.  On the desk is Model M keyboard connected to a IBM PS/2 PC that, on the basis of the cropped image, appears to be a Model 30, a "low end" version that would have included either an 8086 (16-bit with 8-bit bus connectivity) or 80286 (16/16) CPU (central processing unit) and in either case would have been built on the AT (Advanced Technology) bus, later known as ISA (Industry Standard Architecture).  Higher end models included the 80386 (32/32 bit) CPU and MCA (Micro Channel Architecture, an early implementation of PnP (plug & play)), some even with the new OS/2 operating system.  For a number of reasons (technological and economic), MCA and OS/2 proved chimeric although OS/2 did become a fabulous beast, lasting in its niche into the twenty-first century and hobbyists still support development on the platform.  The LSLF's PS/2 may be running IBM PC-DOS 4.01, a "bug-fix" of the prematurely-released v4.0 that shipped with "bugs" in the handling of the then novel EMS (Expanded Memory Specification) on non-IBM expansion boards; memory was in the 1980s of great interest as users needed ways to "work-around" DOS's by the infamous 640 kb "addressable limit".  Microsoft "bug-fixed" v4.0 and this was released by IBM as PC-DOS 4.01; while MS-DOS 4.0 was always the "debugged" version, very few copies were shipped so numbered, a "cosmetic release" as 4.01 soon in the channel because of the reputation of v4.0 as "flawed".  Despite that, there's nothing to suggest pristine copies (ie still in shrink-wrap) of MS-DOS 4.0 have become even a minor collector's item.

Luna rock samples for touch in the LSLF.

Also in the LSLF is a display of the world's only eight lunar rocks (some nearly four billion years old), able to be touched by visitors.  Actually, as anyone at NASA cheerfully would admit, that exercise in lunar tactility may be a more common experience than advertised because there are many “Moon rocks” (and much dust) on or under the Earth’s surface; what distinguishes those on display in the LSLF is they are “certified” as having travelled here in the care of an Apollo craft’s astronauts.  Lacking a protective atmosphere, as the many craters testify, the Moon has been hit by many objects, the larger with such energy that fragments of lunar material have been ejected at a speed sufficient to exceed the “escape velocity” imposed by gravity (less than 2.5 km/s); Earth being the Moon’s near neighbour, some of those fragments travelled on an Earth-crossing trajectory and have fallen to the surface as lunar meteorites.  This process is ongoing and many have been identified, especially in Antarctica and desert regions where they’re relatively easy to recognise; chemically and isotopically they carry markers and these distinctive characteristics can be compared with the Apollo and other Luna samples.  Geologists note that of the volume of the stuff on Earth, much will never be identified because (1) so much lands (as we say) in the oceans (some 70% of our planet’s surface), (2) some will be buried deep, (3) processes over time will have incorporated much into Earth's geological cycle to the point the material visually is indistinguishable visually from terrestrial rocks and (4) some material may over millions or billions of years have been weathered into dust or metamorphosed.  What does however distinguish what’s on display to touch at the LSLF is “guaranteed purity”, the lunar material ending up “naturally” on Earth in a sense “infected” by “local contamination”.