Photoflash

Photoflash (pronounced foh-tuh-flash)

(1) An alternative name for a flashbulb (mostly archaic), a lamp which emits a brief flash of bright light; used to take photographs in a dark environment.

(2) Of or relating to flash photography (industry use only).

(3) The precise point at which a flashbulb illuminates.

1925–1930: The construct was photo- + flash.  Photo (phot- the prevocalic) was a clipping of photograph.  Photo was from the combining form φωτω- (phōtō-) of Ancient Greek φῶς (phôs) (light).  The –graph suffix was from the Ancient Greek suffix -γραφω (-graphō), from γράφω (gráphō) (to scratch, to scrape, to graze), probably best known in the derived from -graphy.  Flash was from the Middle English flasshen, a variant of flasken or flaskien (to sprinkle, splash), which was probably of likely of imitative origin.  In the sense use in photography, it was probably of North Germanic origin and akin to the Swedish dialectal flasa (to burn brightly, blaze) and related to flare.  The Icelandic variation from the Germanic was flasa (to rush, hastily to go).  The word photoflash has a long history as a technical term in photography and the manufacture of photographic equipment but three syllables was just too much for general use and the public used “flash” for just about all purposes, the odd necessity like “flashbulb” embraced to avoid confusion.  Photoflash is a noun; the noun plural is photoflashes.

The industry however needed to be more precise so photoflash became a frequent modifier, required because of the modular nature of the flash equipment, originally not part of the camera assembly proper and even at the tail-end of mass-market analogue photography, not all cameras featured built-in flash-lamps.  A photoflash unit was the whole, packaged flash assembly which included the flash-lamp, housing and mounting bracket which attached the unit to the camera body.  Originally the units were designed to accommodate replacement lamps but in 1960s, single-use units were developed, styled usually as rotating cubes which permitted use for four shots.

The photoflash capacitor is not used only in cameras.  It is an electrolytic capacitor designed specifically to provide a pulse of high-voltage energy for a very short duration and as well as the use in conventional photography, they’re installed also in devices using solid-state laser power supplies including optical readers and some printers.  Whatever the hardware to which they’re attached, the purpose is always a brief illumination.  Because of the requirements for feeding a very high current for a precise length of time, the greatest challenge during the development process was to ensure a reliable high discharge pulse without excessive heat generation and thus the physical expansion of components.

Three-frame spread of Lindsay Lohan being photographed at the point of photoflash.

Photoflash composition has two meanings: (1) The pyrotechnic material which, when loaded in a suitable casing and ignited, produces a flash of sufficient intensity and duration for photographic purposes and (2) the collections of techniques used by professional photographers when shooting in light conditions where the use of a photoflash is required.  This involves considering things like the available ambient light, distance, the angles of surrounding surfaces & their reflective properties and the need for any filtering.  For professionals, photoflash devices (known variously as flashes, speed-lights, studio strobes and a number of other terms) are adjustable to an extent those used on consumer lever cameras typically are not, the relevant metric a product of the relationship between the distance between the subject & light source and what is called the focal length (dictated essentially the lens aperture).

RAF 4½ inch (114 mm) Photoflash Bomb (the only fundamental design change was the use of narrower fins on the Mk II version).  The cardboard tubular body was closed at the tail by a dome while the nose was sealed by a diaphragm with a bush, into which was inserted the fuse.  A defined measure of flash composition was loaded between the front and the rear diaphragm while a central tube extended between each, filled with gunpowder.  As soon as a fused flashbomb was released from an aircraft, the fuse was operative, triggering the gunpowder at the desired height which burst the body of the photographic flash, simultaneously igniting the flash composition.

Photoflash composition was of critical importance in the photoflash cartridges used in photoflash bombs which were specialized forms or ordnance perfected during the early years of World War II (1939-1945).  Dropped from aircraft passing over enemy territory, they were fitted with a photoflash cartridge timed to detonate at a height chosen to optimize the spread of light over the area of interest.  The development of the devices had been encouraged by research which confirmed only a small fraction of the bombs dropped by the Royal Air Force (RAF) were coming within miles of hitting the target zone.  For many reasons, the inaccuracy was understandable given that night bombing over distance was a new aspect of war, carried out by inexperienced aircrew in the cold and dark of night, while under fire from night-fighters and ground-based guns, all while trying to locate blacked-out targets.  In the early days, for navigation the crew could rely on little more than maps, mathematics and the visual recognition of physical ground-features.

RAF photograph taken from Vickers Wellington, Berlin 1941.  The ground is illumined by the flash while the unusual light patterns are from ground-based searchlights, the shapes a product of the camera's exposure length.

There would later be electronic innovations such as devices designed to let bombardiers “see through” cloud but the photoflash bomb (always in the RAF known as “flashbombs”) was a relatively simple approach which scaled-up existing technology, the flashbombs essential huge versions of the flashbulbs used on cameras.  Given their size, they were capable for short periods of producing intense light of sufficient dispersal and luminosity to permit either a pilot accurately to position his craft for a bombing run or for surveillance aircraft to take aerial reconnaissance photos at a safe height.  Of great utility at the time, flashbombs are no longer part of the military inventory because of improvements in night-vision optics, radar and satellite imagery.

RAF photograph taken from De Havilland Mosquito (pathfinder), Hamburg 1943.  The shape at the bottom-left of the photograph is the flashbomb exploding. 

The allies used a variety of flashbombs during WWII all with basic but effective engineering and a method of construction which would have been familiar to fireworks makers.  Typically, a flashbomb was a cardboard tube, capped on both ends with metal stoppers and filled a flash powder charge and a fuse set to trigger after a certain time, the length of the fuse determining the detonation height.  Being a camera’s flashbulb writ large, the flash lasted only around 200 milliseconds but this was ideal for aerial photography and could be enough for a pilot’s visual orientation although flashbombs were often dropped in staggered clusters, providing an extended duration of visibility.

Lichtdom

Lichtdom (pronounced lish-dumm)

A visual technique using light to emulate large-scale architecture.

1934: The construct of the German Lichtdom was licht + dom (literally “cathedral of light”).  Licht (variously light, effortless, freely, easy, free; luminous; eye, clear, sparse, bright, light, shiny, light colored; distinct, plain, obvious, explicit, lucid, straightforward) was from the Middle High German lieht and the Middle German līcht), from the Old High German lioht, from the Old Saxon lioht, from the Proto-West Germanic leuht, from the Proto-Germanic leuhtą, from the primitive Indo-European lewktom.  The descendants include the Dutch licht and the English light.  The obsolete alternative spelling was Liecht.  The colloquial uses include describing candles and (in hunting), the eye of (especially ground) game.  The usual plural is Lichter but Lichte operates as a plural when speaking of candles.  Dom (cathedral; church; big church building; dome, cupola) was from the French dôme, from the Italian duomo, from the Latin domus (ecclesiae (literally “house (of the church)”)), a calque of the Ancient Greek οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (oîkos tês ekklēsías).

Nuremberg Rally, 1934.

Of all that was designed by Albert Speer (1905-1981; Hitler’s court architect 1934-1942), little was built and less remains.  Although he would later admit the monumentalism of the Nazi architectural plans was a mistake, his apologia was always tinged with the regret that in the years to come, all he was likely to be remembered for was his “immaterial lightshow”, used as a dramatic backdrop for the party rallies held at the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg.  Compared with what, had things worked out, he’d have been able to render in steel, concrete, marble and granite, Lichtdom (cathedral of light) was of course ephemeral but it’s undeniably memorable.  Speer created the effect by placing the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) entire stock (152) of 1500 mm (60 inch) searchlights around the stadium’s perimeter and maximized the exposure of the design by insisting as many events as possible be conducted in darkness, the other advantage being the lighting disguised the paunchiness of the assembled Nazis, many of whom were flabbier than the party’s lean, Nordic ideal, something which anyway was suspect, one joke spread by the famously cynical Berlin natives noting that empirically a better description of the Nazi ideal was "as blonde as Hitler, as fit as Göring, as tall as Goebbels and as sane as Hess".

Nuremberg Rally, 1936.

Few were unimpressed.  Sir Neville Henderson (1882-1942; UK ambassador to Germany 1937-1939), the UK’s admittedly impressionable ambassador described the ethereal atmosphere as “…both solemn and beautiful… like being in a cathedral of ice.”  History though has preferred “cathedral of light” and brief views are captured in Hans Weidemann’s (1904-1975) Festliches Nürnberg (Festival of Nuremberg; a 1937 propaganda film chronicling the 1936 and 1937 events) which is mercifully shorter than Leni Riefenstahl’s (1902–2003) better-known works although the poor quality of the film stock used can only hint at the majesty achieved but the use of Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) as a musical accompaniment helps.  Riefenstahl actually claimed she suggested the idea to Speer and a much better record exists in her film Olympia (1938) which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics at which the technique was also used.  Architects had of course for millennia been interested in light but apart from those responsible for the placement of stained glass windows and other specialties, mostly they were concerned with function rather than anything representational.  It was the advances the nineteenth century in the availability and luminosity of artificial light which allowed them to use light as an aesthetic element not limited by the time of day and thus the angle of the sun.

Speer had plenty of time to reflect on the past while serving the twenty years in Berlin’s Spandau prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a sentence he was lucky to receive.  His interest in light persisted and with unrestricted access to the FRG’s (the Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany) technical libraries, he assembled close to a thousand pages of notes for a planned book on the history of the window in European buildings, musing on variables such as the cost and availability of glass at different times in different places, the shifting cost of the labor of glaziers & carpenters and market interventions such as England’s notorious “window tax” which resulted in some strange looking structures.  Ever drawn to the mathematics he’d in his youth intended to study until forced to follow his father into architecture, he pondered the calculations which might produce the changes in “what value a square meter of light had at different periods” and what this might reveal beyond the actual buildings.

It was a shame the book was never written.  He recalled also the effects he applied to the German pavilion he built for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, bathing it at night with “…skilfully arranged spotlights.  The result was to make the architecture of the building emerge sharply outlined against the night, and at the same time to make it unreal... a combination of architecture and light.”  It was at the Paris event the German and Soviet pavilions sat directly opposed, something of a harbinger and deliberately so.  He was nostalgic too about the Lichtdom, thinking it recalled “a fabulous setting, like one of the imaginary crystal palaces of the Middle Ages” although wryly he would note history would remember his contributions to his profession only for the ephemeral, the “…idea that the most successful architectural creation of my life is a chimera, an immaterial phenomenon.”  Surprisingly, for someone who planned the great city of Germania (the planned re-building of Berlin) with its monumental structures, the news that all that remained in the city of his designs were a handful of lampposts (which stand to this day) seemed something almost amusing.  In all his post-war writings, although there’s much rejection as “a failure” of the plan of Germania and the rest of the “neo-Classical on a grand scale” which characterized Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) vision of representational architecture, it’s not hard to detect twinges of regret for the unbuilt and sometimes he admitted it.  As he was contemplating a return to the drawing board upon his impending release, he noted: “Although I have had enough of monumental architecture and turn my mind deliberately to utilitarian buildings, it sometimes comes hard for me to bid goodbye to my dreams of having a place in the history of architecture. How will I feel when I am asked to design a gymnasium, a relay station, or a department store after I planned the biggest domed hall in the world?  Hitler once said to my wife: ‘I am assigning tasks to your husband such as have not been given for four thousand years. He will erect buildings for eternity!’  And now gyms!”  As things transpired, not even a gym was built and he instead wrote his history in text.  Of that piece of curated architecture, some were fooled and some not.

Tribute in Light annual commemoration, New York.

Dramatic though it was, the exact effect Speer achieved in the 1930s is so tainted by its association with the Nazis that few have attempted to recycle the motif although one pop-star used the effect as a visual backdrop in 1976 when he was going through a right-wing phase which he chose later not to mention.  Isolated or clustered beams are however often used and one display is an annual “Tribute in Light” to commemorate the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  It demonstrates the way the play of light can be used; depending on conditions, the light can bounce off the clouds, creating a very different effect than that afforded by a clear sky and it’s possible to render in those clouds a virtual oculus.

Tribute in Light annual commemoration, New York: The oculus effect.  Note the circling birds.

One problem with high intensity light the Tribute in Light has high-lighted is the way temporarily it messes each year with the migration of hundreds of thousands of songbirds.  The memorial uses 88 focused spotlights, the beams of which reach some 6¼ miles (10 km) into the sky and are visible from as far away as sixty miles (100 km).  Traditionally, the display was illuminated from dusk to dawn but of late it’s been switched off for twenty minute intervals in deference to the songbirds which in mid-September make their long flight from their breeding grounds in Canada's boreal forests to their winter homes in the southern US, Mexico, and Central & South America.  They fly mostly by night and it’s thought they’ve evolved to navigate by the stars but, unfortunately, are much attracted to light.  The Tribute in Light having more light than anything else at altitude, the display seems to confuse the birds and it was noted the death toll from birds crashing into New York windows increased every 9/11.  Observers found there was also an element of sound involved, the birds in the light issuing the call associated with distress, this tending to draw more songbirds to the light.

Tribute in Light annual commemoration, New York: Songbirds caught in the light.

Researchers used radar to quantify the effect.  Typically, the skies within a ¼ mile (400 m) of the un-illumined memorial contained around 500 birds but when lit, within 20 minutes, there were almost 16,000.  Extrapolating the data, it was estimated some 1.1 million migrating songbirds had been affected between 2008-2016, even accounting for the lights since 2009 having been shut-off for twenty minutes whenever volunteers count more than 1,000 birds in the beams.  It’s thought the death–toll from birds crashing into buildings is relatively low but there’s concern also the creatures are compelled to expend energy when circling the site, burning up vital energy needed for their long flights.  Shutting off the lights is thought to allow the birds to re-focus on their guiding stars to find their bearings and continue the migration south.  Bird lovers would prefer searchlights not be used at all and some sites have agreed not to use them during the migration season but there’s obviously much sensitivity around the 9/11 commemoration.  Human development of the built environment has for a long time influenced the migration path, the radar data confirming birds disproportionately choose to fly over cities, the researchers referring to the “almost magnetic pull of birds to light.”  We need to remember that it’s their planet too.

Fragment from Olympia (1938) with Lichtdom.

Butterfly

Butterfly (pronounced buht-er-flahy)

(1) Any of numerous diurnal insects of the order Lepidoptera, characterized by clubbed antennae, a slender body, and large, broad, often conspicuously marked wings which are typically closed when the creature is at rest (the adjectival form is lepidopteran).

(2) A person who moves effortlessly from one social situation to another, usually as “social butterfly”.

(3) Someone perceived as unserious and (originally) dressed gaudily; someone flighty and unreliable; a bolter (common between the seventeenth & nineteenth centuries; now archaic).

(4) In competitive swimming, a racing breaststroke, using a dolphin kick, in which the swimmer brings both arms out of the water in forward, circular motions.

(5) In carpentry, as butterfly joint (or wedge), a type of joint or inlay used permanently to hold together two or more pieces of timber, either as something aesthetic (usually with a contrasting color of timber) or merely functional (also known as the bow tie, dovetail key, Dutchman joint, or Nakashima joint).

(6) In sculpture, an X-shaped support attached to an armature.

(7) As butterfly arm, the swinging brackets of a butterfly table.

(8) In film editing, a screen of scrim, gauze, or similar material, for diffusing light.

(9) In cooking or the display of food, to spread open in halves what is being prepared, resembling the wings of a butterfly (the chef’s term being butterflied).

(10) In financial trading, the simultaneous purchase and sale of traded call options, at different exercise prices or with different expiry dates, on a stock exchange or commodity market; historically a combination of four options of the same type at three strike prices giving limited profit and limited risk.

(11) In medical & surgical dressings, a prepared bandage or the use of surgical tape, cut into thin strips and placed across an open wound in a manner which resembles the open wings of a butterfly, holding it closed.

(12) In mathematics and geometry, any of several plane curves that look like a butterfly and known as butterfly curves (transcendental & algebraic).

(13) In chaos theory and the discipline of alternate (counter-factual) history, as butterfly effect, a single event or random change in an aspect of the timeline seemingly unrelated to the primary point of divergence, resulting from the event.

(14) In automotive design (also used on certain airframes and nautical vessels) a style of door hinged from the A pillars (the windscreen frame).

(15) In engineering, a term applied to a number of fittings (butterfly valve, butterfly clamp, butterfly nut) with some resemblance to the open wings of a butterfly.

(16) As a motif, a widely use shape in fields such as architecture, stained glass, visual art and industrial design.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English buterflie, butturflye & boterflye, from the Old English butorflēoge, buttorflēoge & buterflēoge.  It was cognate with the Dutch botervlieg and the German Butterfliege (butterfly).  The construct was (with variations was butere (butter) +‎ fly.  Etymologists note alternative origins for the name.  Either (1) it was first applied to creatures with wings of a notably yellowish hue (perhaps the dominant or single species of the type in an area) or (2) as a response to the belief that butterflies ate milk and butter or (3) the first element may have originally been butor- (beater), a mutation of bēatan (to beat), a reference to the movement of the wings.  The idea of the fragile things as thieves of milk and butter is supported by similar instances in other European languages including the German Molkendieb (butterfly (literally “whey thief”) and the Low German Botterlicker (butterfly (literally butter-licker) & Bottervögel (butterfly (literally “butter-fowl”).  There was also the notion they excreted a butter-like substance, memorably expressed in the Dutch boterschijte (butterfly (literally “butter-shitter”).  Most memorable however is the explanation in the tales of the Brothers Grimm (die Brüder Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859)) in which witches disguised themselves as butterflies.  The early forms in Middle English superseded the non-native Middle English papilion (butterfly) borrowed from the Old French.  Butterfly is a noun & adjective, butterflied is a verb & adjective and butterflying is a verb.  The noun plural is butterflies.

Anatomy of the butterfly valve (left), butterfly crochet (centre) & butterfly bandage (right).

Butter was from the Middle English buter & butter, from the Old English butere, from the Proto-West Germanic buterā, from the Latin būtȳrum, from the Ancient Greek βούτῡρον (boútūron) (cow cheese), the construct being βοῦς (boûs) (ox, cow) + τῡρός (tūrós) (cheese).  Fly was from the Middle English flye & flie, from the Old English flȳġe & fleoge (a fly, a winged insect), from the Proto-Germanic fleugǭ (a fly) & fleugon (flying insect), from the primitive Indo-European plewk- (to fly).  It was cognate with the Scots flee, the Saterland Frisian Fljooge, the German Low German Fleeg, the Danish flue, Norwegian Bokmål flue & Norwegian Nynorsk fluge, the Swedish fluga and the Icelandic fluga, the Old Saxon fleiga, the Old Norse fluga, the Middle Dutch vlieghe, the Dutch vlieg, the Old High German flioga and the German Fliege (fly (literally "the flying (insect))).  The Old English fleogende (flying) was from the primitive Indo-European root pleu- (to flow).

Social butterfly Lindsay Lohan in butterfly print swimsuit, Cannes, 2016.

Butterfly was applied first to people circa 1600, originally in reference to vain and gaudy attire, an allusion to often bright and varied colors of a butterfly's wings.  By 1806 it had become a class-based put-down referencing a transformation from a lower social class to something better, invoking the idea of progression from sluggish caterpillar to graceful butterfly (essentially a synonym for bounder).  The reference to flitting tendencies (from one interest, occupation etc) dates from 1873 and the social butterfly (one who moves effortlessly between social encounters and events) emerged in the 1920s.  The swimming stroke was first defined in 1935.  As a general descriptor (butterfly agave, butterfly ballot, butterfly fish, butterfly flower, butterfly plant, butterfly bomb, butterfly keyboard, butterfly chair, butterfly ray, butterfly shell etc), it’s applied wherever the resemblance to the open wings appears compelling.  In culture, the butterfly tends to be more admired than caterpillar which is an earlier stage of their development, the lovely creatures often appearing on fabrics used for clothing and furnishings.

Native to the forests of Central and South America, the Blue Morpho is one of the world’s largest butterflies. The wings are bright blue with lacy black edges, the result of light reflecting off microscopic scales on the back of their wings.  Lovely though the blue appears, it’s often not seen because the underside of this butterfly’s wing is a dull brown which provides a camouflage against predators.  When the wings are closed as the Blue Morpho sits on a tree, it blends in well.

Highly qualified content provider Busty Buffy (b 1996) being adorned with body paint in the shape of a butterfly with open wings.

Butterfly valves came into use in the late 1700s and have been popular since for their ease of manufacture, simplicity of operation and low maintenance.  The butterfly nut appeared in 1869 although in some markets it usually called the wing nut; interestingly, the similar fastener with a male thread is known as a wing screw or wing bolt but apparently never a butterfly screw or bolt, presumably because the delicate butterfly is thought emblematically female.  The phrase “Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?” is from Alexander Pope's (1688-1744) Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" (1735).  The allusion is to "breaking on the wheel", a form of torture in which victims had their long bones broken by an iron bar while tied to a Catherine wheel, the idea a critique of excessive effort or deployment of resources to solve a simple problem; the less confronting phrase “sledgehammer to crack a nut” means the same thing.  The phrase “butterflies in the stomach” is a descriptive reference to the mild stomach spasms induced by anxiety and dates from 1908.  The butterfly effect is the most celebrated idea from (the somewhat misleadingly named) chaos theory, introduced in the 1972 paper Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas? by US academic meteorologist Edward Lorenz (1917–2008).  Lorenz had developed the theory based on his observations in the early 1960s (in one of the earliest big-data models) that a tiny change in one variable (one of a dozen numbers representing atmospheric conditions) had an extraordinary effect upon long-term outcomes.

1966 Dodge Polara convertible (left) and 1966 Dodge Monaco 500 two-door hardtop (right).

The use of the butterfly motif in industrial design in 1967 became a footnote in legal history in the trial of the boxers Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (1937–2014) & John Artis (1946-2021) for a triple murder committed at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey.  Evidence presented by the prosecution claimed that witness descriptions of the getaway car matched the hired car Carter was found driving in the vicinity of the Lafayette immediately after the killings, their statements even including a mention of the distinctive butterfly-shaped taillight chrome.  However, although a witness said the rear lights lit up across the back of the getaway car, the taillights on Carter's Dodge Polara, although there was certainly a butterfly chrome surround, lit up only at the edges; it was the more expensive Dodge Monaco which had the extended lights.  In the ever changing swirl of model names and trim levels which characterized the US industry during its golden age (1955-1973), in 1966 the Polara was Dodge’s entry-level full-size model, above which sat the higher-priced Polara 500, Monaco, and Monaco 500.  For some reason (and this was not unusual), the lineup’s nomenclature in Canada differed, being Polara, Polara 440, Polara 880, and Monaco.  In both markets however, it was only the Monaco which featured the extended tail lamps.

1966 Dodge Polara convertible (left) and 1966 Dodge Monaco two-door hardtop (right).

On a dark night, glimpsed by a traumatized witness for a second or two, that may have not been significant because tests did reveal the reflective silver finish on the Polara’s rear panel did indeed appear red at certain angles when the brake lights were activated but the distinction, along with a witness’s correction of this in the 1976 re-trial did lead some to suggest the police might have been coaching witnesses; “hardening the statement” in law enforcement lingo.  That actually aligned with the evidence provided by another witness and the prosecution would later suggest later suggested the confusion was caused by the defense misreading the court transcript.

Maria Callas (1923-1977), backstage after appearing as Madam Butterfly, Civic Opera House, Chicago, 17 November 1955.  Had Cio-Cio-San been this feisty, she'd have kept Pinkerton. 

Bud Daley’s famous AP (Associated Press) photograph of diva Maria Callas, still in her Cio-Cio-San’s kimono, caught her snarling at US Federal Marshal Stanley Pringle, one of eight process servers there to serve her with two summonses.  The image was shot just after she'd left the stage, following her third and final performance in Giacomo Puccini's (1858–1924) Madama Butterfly (Madam Butterfly, 1904) and appeared the next morning on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times with the headline: “Not So Prim a Donna”.  The article reported her words as: “Chicago will hear about this!  I will not be sued!  I have the voice of an angel!  No man can sue me.”  It transpired however at least one man could sue, the action brought by one Edward “Eddy” Bagarozy, who claimed to be the singer’s agent, an assertion based on a contract dating from 1947; the plaintiff sought (1) specific performance of the contract and (2) in the alternative, damages of US$300,000 (depending on the metrics chosen, equivalent to between US$4-6 million in 2025).  As in many such matters, ultimately, things were settled out of court.

2002 Ferrari Enzo (left) & 2016 Ferrari LaFerrari (right).

Butterfly doors are used on some high-performance cars and not wholly as a gimmick, the advantage being that in such usually low-slung vehicle, they do make entry and exit somewhat easier than scissor doors.  There’s even more functionally on certain competition cars because (1) they allow the carefully-crafted aerodynamics of the canopy to be preserved, (2) the driver can enter and leave the cockpit more quickly and (3) the design allows the structural integrity of the shell to be maximized.  Butterfly doors open upwards and outwards and in that they differ from scissor doors which are hinged to move only upwards, thus offering the possibility of a greater aperture while demanding more lateral clearance.  Exotic doors were seen in a handful of pre-war cars, none of which reached production, but it was the Mercedes-Benz 300SL (W194) race-car of 1952 which brought to public attention the idea car doors could be something different.  Such was the response that the factory used the gull-wing doors when, in 1954, the 300SL (W198) was offered in a road-going version although the engineering, like the concept, was not new, having before been used in both marine architecture and aircraft fuselages.  Similarly, the design elements which underlie butterfly and scissor doors can be found in buildings and machinery dating back in some cases centuries but of late, all have come most to be associated with exotic cars.

1967 Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale

Variations on the theme had appeared on the show circuit for some time before butterfly doors debuted on the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale in 1967 which was much admired but it was thought the complexity of such things would limit their use to low volume runs such as the Stradale (of which only 18 were built) or one-off styling exercises such as the Alfa Romeo Carabo (1968) which used scissors.  However, scissor doors appeared on the prototype Lamborghini Countach (LP500) and, despite the doubts of some, were retained when the production version was released in 1974.  Since then, gull-wings (which open upward on a horizontal axis, hinged from the roof), scissors (which open upwards, rotating on a horizontal axis, hinged from the front), butterflies (which open upwards and outwards on an axis unaligned to the vertical or horizontal, hinged from the A (windscreen) pillar and dihedrals (scissors which move laterally while rotating ) have become common (relatively speaking) and designers seem intent on adding some new twist which seem sometimes to add no advantage but usually attract publicity (admittedly an advantage in the abstract), the most complex to date being the dihedral synchro helix doors which open forward, slide forward and rotate up.

Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR Coupé & Roadster (top) and McLaren MP4-12C Coupé & Spider (bottom).

When Mercedes-Benz released the SLR McLaren (2003-2009), in an attempt to make explicit the link with the 300SL, they laid it on with a trowel, the phrase “gullwing doors” appearing in the factory’s original press release no less than seven times, just in case people didn’t get the message.  Nobody was fooled and they’ve always been called butterflies.  One clever piece of engineering was seen when the SLR roadster was released, those butterfly doors made possible by using hinge points along the rather than at the top.  McLaren used a variation of this idea when it released the McLaren MP4-12C (2011-2014), omitting the top hinge which allowed the use of frameless windows even on the roadster (spider).

IBM's 1995 ThinkPad 701.

IBM's ThinkPad 701 series was available during 1995 and was that year's biggest seller in its class, its distinctive feature the "butterfly" keyboard, a design in response to the obviously contradictory demands that laptops be smaller and lighter while still equipped with keyboards big enough comfortably to be used (especially with the big, clumsy fingers of men).  The 701 was marketed in what was then an untypically IBM manner, newspaper advertisements in the run-up to the launch published with nothing but a butterfly in the corner, the IBM logo later added while a few days before the debut, the text "Watch for the announcement" appeared.  Butterfly had actually been the project's internal codename although it had never been intended for use as a product, apparently because IBM's corporate policies didn't permit the use of the names of living.  Still, the use in the teaser advertisements did suggest they planned it to catch on as a nickname and doubtlessly hoped for a better outcome than the last time a codename was picked-up, the unfortunate "peanut" (the PCjr (1984-1985)) not fondly remembered.

IBM Thinkpad 701 commercial, 1995.

IBM's 1995 ThinkPad 701.

The 701 series was well-received and butterfly keyboard much admired.  By 1995, although it was clear to most of the industry that OS/2 (IBM's pre-emptive, multi-tasking operating system (OS)) was unlikely to achieve critical mass in either the consumer or corporate markets but the company continued to try to nudge things along: While the 701s using Intel’s i486 DX2 50/25 MHz CPU (central processing unit) came pre-installed with a combo PC-DOS 6.3 OS & Microsoft Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups) operating environment, those using the i486 DX4 75/25 MHz chip offered the option of a dual-boot so users could choose either the combo or IBM’s OS/2 Warp (3.0).  The main body of the keyboard was a two-piece construction, which, gear-driven by the movement of the lid, spread apart to become a single unit as the laptop was opened, the process reversed as the lid closed.  IBM actually called it the TrackWrite, but it was universally known as the butterfly and so compelling was the design that to this day, one is on permanent display in Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).  Popular though it was, the market moved and the place on the demand curve at a price point which interested IBM was for laptops with larger screens so the need for the butterfly technology vanished, the 701 remaining unique.  Some patents have recently been filed which suggest manufacturers may be planning to release another laptop with a butterfly keyboard but, in an age of ultra-thin devices, it will presumably be a thing of low-tactility and thus lacking the responsiveness which had been one of the most attractive features of the original.

Thirty years after: 2025 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 (Lenovo part number 21NSCTO1WWAU8).

Although thinner and with many advances internally, at first glance a 2025 Lenovo ThinkPad appears little different from a 1955 (non-butterfly) IBM original.  Like the shark and pencil, the basic laptop design seems to have attained its evolutionary perfection.  Among the features carried over from IBM was the "TrackPoint" (the small, red pointing device in the centre of the keyboard), used to control the on-screen pointer.  IBM made a number of variants of the red rubber cap (“Classic Dome”, “Soft Dome”, “Soft Rim” and (most memorably) “Eraser Head”) but (male) programmers tended to call it “the clit”. 

A descendent of IBM ThinkPad, the original IBM PC-1 (August 1981) was the MRCA (most recent common ancestor) of both and, even now, a few ancient traits remain identifiable.  In 2005, IBM exited the PC (personal computer) and laptop business, selling the lines to Chinese manufacturer Lenovo, including as a transitional arrangement the right to use the IBM brand on the hardware for five years, the last so labelled thus made in 2010.  However, because the ThinkPad and ThinkCentre trademarks were part of the IP (intellectual property) Lenovo acquired, these continue to appear.  The deal in 2005 meant that IBM, which in 1981 had triggered the PC revolution with the release in August of the original PC-1, was no longer a part (although it continued to be active in software and server production) of the industry which (unintentionally) it had played such a part in creating and which transformed the modern world.  Nothing lasts forever.   

Ruin

Ruin (pronounced roo-in)

(1) The remains of a building, city etc that has been destroyed or that is in disrepair or a state of decay.

(2) A destroyed or decayed building, town etc.

(3) A fallen, wrecked, or decayed condition; the downfall, decay, or destruction of anything.

(4) The complete loss of health, means, position, hope, or the like.

(5) Some substance or other thing that causes a downfall or destruction; blight.

(6) The downfall of a person; undoing.

(7) A person as the wreck of his or her former self; ravaged individual.

(8) The act of causing destruction or a downfall.

(9) To reduce to ruin; devastate; to bring (a person, company etc) to financial ruin; bankrupt; to damage, spoil, or injure (a thing) irretrievably.

(10) To induce (a woman) to surrender her virginity; deflower; loss of virginity by a woman outside marriage (mostly archaic).

(11) To fall into ruins; fall to pieces; to come to ruin.

1325–1375: From the Middle English noun rueyne & ruyen, from the Middle French ruwine, from the Latin ruīna (headlong rush, fall, collapse, falling down), the construct being ruere (violently to fall) + -īna (feminine singular of suffix –īnus).  The Middle English verb was ruyn & ruine, from the Middle French ruyner & ruiner or directly from the Medieval Latin ruīnāre, again a derivative of the Latin ruīna.  In the late Old English, rueyne meant "act of giving way and falling down" (a sense which didn't descend into the Middle English), again from the Latin ruina, source also of the Old French ruine (a collapse), the Spanish ruina and the Italian rovina which is a derivative of ruere (to rush, fall violently, collapse), from the primitive Indo-European reue- (to smash, knock down, tear out, dig up).  The sense of "descent from a state of prosperity, degradation, downfall or decay of a person or society" dates from the late fourteenth century while the general meaning "violent or complete destruction" (of anything) and "a profound change so as to unfit a thing for use" (of one's principles, one's goods etc) was first noted by the 1670s, something of an extension of the sense of "that which causes destruction or downfall", from the early fifteenth century.  The special meaning "dishonor of a woman" (essentially the same as "a fallen woman") dates from the 1620s.  Ruins in the sense of "remains of a decayed building or town" was from the mid-fifteenth century; the same sense was in the Latin plural noun.

The verb ruin emerged in the 1580s, first in the military sense of "reduce (a place) to ruin," transitive, from the noun ruin or the fourteenth century French ruiner and from the 1610s it came to mean also "inflict disaster upon" (someone) which extended by the 1650s to mean "bring to ruin, damage essentially and irreparably".  The intransitive sense of "fall into ruin" dates from circa 1600 but is probably now obsolete except for poetic use or as a literary device.  The still well-known financial sense of "reduce to poverty, wreck the finances of" was first noted in the 1650s.  The late fourteenth century adjective ruinous (going to ruin, falling to ruin) was from the Old French ruinos (which endures in Modern French as ruineux) and directly from the Latin ruinosus (tumbling down, going to ruin) from ruina.  The meaning "causing ruin, tending to bring ruin" was from the mid-fifteenth century and by 1817 it was understood almost exclusively to mean "excessively expensive", hence the still popular phrase "ruinously expensive".

The noun ruination is interesting.  It meant in the 1660s the "act of bringing to ruin, state of being brought to ruin" amd was the noun of action or state from the now rare or obsolete verb ruinate (to go to ruin) which had emerged in the 1540s from the Medieval Latin ruinatus, past participle of ruinare, again from the Classical Latin ruina.  Unlike flirtation, floatation, & botheration, ruination was not a hybrid derivative, being regularly formed from ruinate, the technical point being etymologists think it has the effect of a slangy emphatic lengthening of the noun ruin and that only because the parent verb ruinate (in common use 1550-1700) is no longer heard.  For that reason Henry Fowler (1858-1933) in his authoritative Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) suggested "ruination is better avoided except in facetious contexts".

As a noun, ruin means the remains of a destroyed or decayed place, especially a half-standing building or city.  In the latter sense, it’s used most commonly in the plural, often as “ancient ruins”.  When used as a verb, ruin usually means “to spoil or destroy” although the once use to describe “the loss of virginity by an unmarried woman” is now rare.  Related words, sometimes used a synonyms, include bankruptcy, wreckage, collapse, insolvency, wreck, extinction, demolition, destruction, wipe out, mar, impoverish, overwhelm, injure, shatter, exhaust, demolish, crush, decimate, wrack & deplete.  The synonym of ruin most often used is destruction.  Ruin and destruction both imply irrevocable and either widespread or intense damage although, the pattern of use in Modern English seems to have evolved to use destruction (on a scale large or small) to emphasize the act while ruin emphasize the consequence: the resultant state.  Through use, there’s probably also the implication that a ruin is the result of natural processes of time whereas destruction suggests a sudden violent act or event.  The ruins from Antiquity exist both in what remains from the process of decay and as they have been "restored", usually to reflect the expectations of tourists.  For those who like the idea of what the original resembled, there's the odd replica. 

Die Ruinenwerttheorie: Albert Speer and the theory of ruin value.

Ruin value is a concept from architectural theory.  It suggests the design of representational architecture should be such that when eventually the structures crumble or collapse, what remains should be aesthetically impressive ruins which will long endure without any need of maintenance.  The idea was promoted by Hitler’s (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) architect, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945), who first discussed it while planning for the 1936 Summer Olympics and subsequently published a paper as Die Ruinenwerttheorie (The Theory of Ruin Value).  Underling the idea was not merely the stated rationale for the theory but also the assertion such structures would tend inherently to be better built and more imposing during their period of use.  The notion was supported by Hitler, who planned for such ruins to be a symbol of the greatness of his thousand-year Reich, just as the remains from antiquity were symbolic of Hellenic and Roman civilizations.  Speer and Hitler were quite right in understanding the significance of a civilization’s ruins because as French symbolist writer and proto Surrealist Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) explained: “We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well.”

Bank of England as a ruin (1830) by draftsman and artist Joseph Gandy (1771–1843).

In his memoirs (Inside the Third Reich, 1969) Speer laid claim to the idea, saying it was an extension of German architect Gottfried Semper's (1803-1879) views on the use of "natural" materials and the avoidance of iron girders.  Speer’s post-war writings however, although invaluable, are not wholly reliable or entirely truthful, even on technical matters such as armaments and architecture.  Ruin value was an older concept and one much-discussed in nineteenth century Europe, the romantic movement in art and architecture much drawn to, if not exactly what antiquity was, then certainly a neo-classical construct of what they imagined it to be.  This fascination even sometimes assumed a built form: a "new ruined castle" was actually built in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel in the eighteenth century and the motif affected the architect commissioned to design the Bank of England building.  When Sir John Sloane (1753-1837) presented the bank's governors with three oil sketches of the planned buildings one of them depicted it as new, another when weathered after a century and a third, what the ruins would look like a thousand years hence.

Architectural ruins, a vision (1798), water color on paper by Joseph Gandy.

A watercolor imagining the Rotunda at the Bank of England (designed by Soane and completed in 1798), drawn in the year of its completion but showing the structure in the style of a Roman ruin.  The small figures of men with pickaxes working around a fire amidst the ruins recall the calciatori of Rome, who pillaged marble from its ancient sites to be burned into lime. This atmospheric watercolor recalls Piranesi's views of ruin with its dramatic point of view, fallen fragments in the foreground.  This drawing was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1832, thirty-four years after it was executed, at the time of Soane’s retirement as architect to the Bank, under the romantic title of Architectural Ruins–A Vision (RA 1832, number 992) and accompanied by lines from Prospero's speech (Act IV, scene 1) in Shakespeare's The Tempest:

The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,

the solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve.

The ruin that never was.  A model of Speer's Volkshalle (people’s hall), centrepiece of Germania, the new capital of the Reich to be built over Berlin.

Speer based his design on a sketch made by Hitler himself in 1925, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome which had been created for an empire that lasted centuries.  Clever use of steel and lightweight concrete behind stone cladding permitted the scale of the structure.  The Volkshalle would have risen some 950 feet (290m), the oculus in the centre of the dome 150 feet (46 metres) in diameter, so big that Michelangelo’s dome of St Peter’s could have been lowered through it.  The volume of the building was such that it would have its own micro-climate and weather patterns; clouds would have formed, and rain drops falling on the masses below.   The Volkshalle symbolized an empire planned to endure a thousand years but the Third Reich fell after barely a dozen years and neither Volkshalle nor Germania were built and at war's end, surrounding the proposed site, Berlin lay in ruins.