Protocol

Protocol (pronounced proh-tuh-kawl, proh-tuh-kol or proh-tuh-kohl)

(1) In government (applied especially to the diplomatic service), the customs and regulations dealing with diplomatic formality, precedence, and etiquette.

(2) By extension, an accepted code of conduct; acceptable behavior in a given situation or group.

(3) In diplomacy or other intra- & inter-governmental relations, an original draft, minute, or record from which a document, especially a treaty, is prepared.

(4) An agreement between states (or other national or international entities) or a supplementary international agreement (some notably being secret).

(5) An annex to a treaty containing technical data, definitions etc.

(6) In clinical medicine, the plan of a patient's treatment regimen (which can be a generalized document).

(7) In academic research (especially in medical trials including living subjects), the details, standards & safeguards etc.

(8) In computing, a set of rules governing the format in which data must exist to communicate between devices.

(9) In philosophy, a statement reporting an observation or experience in the most fundamental terms (ie without any commentary or other interpretative layers (and sometimes taken as the basis of empirical verification, as of scientific laws).  It’s known also as the protocol statement, protocol sentence & protocol proposition

(10) To draft, submit for consideration or issue a protocol; to make a protocol of; to make or write protocols; to issue protocols (actual use now probably extinct although such forms do still exist in some diplomatic manuals).

(11) In the Roman Catholic Church, (1) the introduction of a liturgical preface, immediately following the Sursum corda (lift up your hearts) dialogue & (2) an official list (technical details or consequential documents) which, since the late nineteenth century have sometimes been appended (at the beginning or end) to documents such as charters and papal bulls.

1535–1545: From the earlier protocoll, from the Middle French protocolle & protocole (document, record), from the Medieval Latin prōtocollum, from the Byzantine Greek πρωτόκολλον (prōtókollon) (the first kóllēma (a leaf or tag) glued to a rolled papyrus manuscript, listing the contents), the construct being πρῶτος (prôtos) (first) + κόλλα (kólla) (glue).  A kóllēma was “something bound or glued together”.  Proto- was a learned borrowing from the Ancient Greek πρωτο- (prōto-) from πρῶτος (prôtos) (first), superlative of πρό (pró) (before).  In the mid-fifteenth century the spelling prothogol had been used (meaning literally “prologue”) and by the 1540s prothogall (draft of a document, minutes of a transaction or negotiation, original of any writing”, again from the thirteenth century French prothocole (which in Modern French persists as protocole) was in use.  Protocol is a noun & verb, protocolar is a noun, protocoled & protocolled are verbs and protocolary & protocolic are adjectives; the noun plural is protocols.

The plural form was kollēmata (sheets of papyrus glued together to form a roll) and on the basis of those extant or referenced elsewhere, each was typically between 16-24 sheets which, when un-rolled, extended to between 18-30 feet (5.5-9 m).  It’s not clear when use began but the earliest documented evidence of use is from the early medieval period.  A tube-like prōtókollon (usually of a rougher form of parchment but some seem to have been made from tree bark) protected a rolled-up scroll and the original was similar to what in modern publishing came to be called the colophon (containing variously copyright details, a mark of authentication, the date of publication, the font and typesetting data and the name of the author) although the usual function was to list a summary of the contents, any errata or the purpose of the work.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (with preface and explanatory notes), The Patriotic Publishing Co., Chicago, 1934.  Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica.

All such things were of course those which comprised the framework of government & diplomacy and, by the mid-nineteenth century, French bureaucrats had formalized the protocol as (1) “an official record of a transaction & a diplomatic document” (especially an agreement between states to achieve certain things by peaceful means) and (2) “official norms of behavior or etiquette to be maintained between states and their ministers”.  The later sense was understood in English by at least 1896 and by 1952 it was in common use to describe “civilized behavior” in society generally, becoming a popular word in the etiquette guides which proliferated (along with the middle class) in the post-war years.  Long in thrall to all things French, the use relating to matters etiquette was late in the nineteenth century picked up by Russian diplomats and from the Tsar’s court it entered various state apparatuses (of which the Tsar had many), the foreign ministry creating protokóls for everything from the thickness of the carpet allowed in offices according to the rank of the occupant to the form of words to be used when declaring war.  The police used protokól as a heading of “official police records of a case, interview or incident” although the use in Russia will forever be associated with the infamous forgery Протоколы сионских мудрецов (Protokoly sionskikh mudretsov) (The Protocols of the (Learned) Elders of Zion (1903)), an anti-Semitic tract published in English under the title The Jewish Peril (1920).  Although debunked as a forgery as early as 1921, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion enjoyed a remarkable life in the twentieth century, accepted as authentic even by some otherwise respectable professors and it remains widely available.  It purports to be the minutes of a secret meeting held by Jewish leaders (known as the Elders of Zion), who met allegedly to conspire to control the world, manipulate governments, and establish a global Jewish domination.  There have been a number of theories about the origin of the protocols and its spread has been compared to the conspiracy theories published by QAnon on 4Chan and other places in that such things rely less on the authenticity of their content than the accessibility to an audience which, even in embryonic form, already maintains those views.

In computing, the terms "protocol" and "parameter" are (casually) sometimes used interchangeably and while it is true protocols contain many parameters, correctly, the two words refer to different concepts.  A protocol is a set of rules and conventions, the best known of which are those which govern the communication between devices in a network; it defines the format, timing, sequencing, and error control of the data packets which are the messages exchanged between these entities.  The significance of protocols is that they ensure diverse devices and systems can interact effectively, removing the need for the hardware to be substantially similar and in that they can be compared with operating systems which sit atop sometimes very different hardware.  The best known network protocols include HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) although two of the oldest (RS-232, RS-422 & RS-485) serial communications protocols are still in use in the odd niche. By contrast, a parameter is a variable, a value passed to a function, procedure, or command in order to customize its behavior or provide input for its execution.  Parameters are helpful because they allow software to be flexible and adaptable by accepting different inputs without demanding changes to the code.  Parameters may be compared to the range of adjustments offered by the driver’s seat in a car.  Were no adjustments available, manufacturers would have to produce different models for people of different heights.

Lindsay Lohan released NFTs based on Trons’s TRC-721 protocol (functionally similar to Ethereum’s ERC-721).

The recent collapse in the non fungible token (NFT) market surprised few of the analysts who had predicted a bubble market based on selling something “non-fungible” which merely referenced something inherently fungible and infinitely duplicable wouldn’t long last and would be among the first victims of any instability in the wider economy.  Analysts always enjoy being able to say “I told you so”.  Still, the NFTs themselves (in the sense of the object on a blockchain) have a robustness which offers much promise as a kind of macro-title document and, if regulators can agree, the concept may have a future in fields like land title or ownership certificates for traded, high-value collectables.  The infrastructure is certainly beyond the embryonic because a number of blockchains have added support for NFTs since Ethereum created its ERC-721 standard.  ERC-721 is an “inheritable” protocol which means developers can create contracts by copying from a reference implementation, a contract able to be tracked to the owner of a unique identifier and it includes a mechanism by which ownership can be transferred.  Ethereum also developed the ERC-1155 protocol which (a little misleadingly), they described as offering a “semi-fungibility” whereby a token represents a class of interchangeable assets.  Ethereum did however demonstrate the inherent flexibility of the NFT approach even if they did little to improve the transactional speed although, if the protocols have a future in low-volume, high-value items such as land or collectable physical objects, that really matters little.  There were though other approaches and the Tron Network released their NFT model using Proof-of-Stake (PoS) which differs from Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work (PoW) based blockchain.  PoS & Tron’s TRC-721 protocol, cheaper and faster to use, attracted Lindsay Lohan when she released some “collectables” as NFTs.

Fungible

Fungible (pronounced fuhn-juh-buhl)

In law, finance and commerce, being of such nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind (especially as applied to physical goods).

1765: From the Medieval Latin fungibilis, the construct being fung(ī) (to perform the office of) + -ibilis (-ible) (a variant of -bilis, the suffix usually added to certain verbs to form an adjective denoting passive qualities).  Root was the Latin fungor (I perform; I discharge a duty), source of the Modern English function, it was originally a legal term in Medieval Latin drawn from Roman civil law, res fungibilis (replaceable things), used typically in proceedings in phrases such as fungi vice (to take the place).  The adjectival form was first used in 1818.  The synonyms are interchangeable, exchangeable & replaceable.  Of late, the word has acquired a new life in the NFT, the non-fungible token, an entry in the digital ledger the blockchain which, thus far, provides an owner with an unimpeachable, blockchain-verified proof of ownership.  Fungible is a noun and adjective, fungibility is a noun and nonfungible & unfungible are adjectives that of late have come more frequently to be used; the noun plural is fungibles.  

Fungible and non-fungible

In law, finance and commerce, the general principle of fungibility is of a thing able to be substituted for something of equal value or utility.  The classic fungible is physical cash.  If one lends $10,000 to another, it usually matters not if the loan is repaid in different banknotes than those used in the initial transaction.  However, a rare US$10,000 note is non-fungible and ten thousand one dollar notes are not a substitute in the same way that to a coin collector, a rare nickel (five cent) is not interchangeable with another whereas most nickels are in just about any transaction.  A commodity like crude oil is fungible.  When a futures trader executes a contract for 100,000 barrels of Tapas Crude six months hence, the oil may be in the ground, in a tanker or in storage tank somewhere.  Precious diamonds are often not perfectly fungible because each is unique and cannot always be substituted with another, even if of similar size and identical nominal value whereas industrial diamonds are fungible and need only conform to a specification to be an acceptable substitute.  The concept is important in criminal law.  As a general principle, when alleging theft, the state has to prove the items in position of accused are those stolen.  If the theft involves fungibles (petrol, money etc) where it may not be possible to establish the physical relationship, the state must provide other evidence.

Images associated with some of Lindsay Lohan's NFTs. 

Non-fungible tokens

A non-fungible token (NFT) is an entry on a blockchain, a digital ledger.  All the NFT does is certify the uniqueness of the token itself and it’s created usually to guarantee an exclusive (legal) ownership of some asset, typically material stored in digital format such as image and audio files.  Of themselves, NFTs don’t restrict access to a file or prevent its duplication and dissemination; they are just a proof of ownership.  Transactional volumes by 2021 had reached US$ billions; future growth will depend of (1) whether the blockchain proves as robust as it appears and (2) whether NFT prove to be actual tangible asset or bubble although there’s no reason they can’t assume a different trajectory from cryptocurrency.  Technically, a blockchain need not be associated with a cryptocurrency but to date most NFT transactions have been on the Ethereum blockchain, its infrastructure well understood and at one layer of that structure, any blockchain is just another file system, an NFT differing from a ETH coin only in that different (and additional) data are entered.  The NFT can be associated with a digital or physical asset or a license to use the asset on whatever basis may be granted and may be traded.  The underlying mechanism of the blockchain means as database entries, NFTs work like any cryptographic tokens but, unlike cryptocurrencies, NFTs are not interchangeable and are thus inherently non-fungible.  However, although every bitcoin is exactly the same, inevitability, someone will work out a way to find some unique aspect of some bitcoin (such as the “first” one) and at that point, the NFT will be created.

No NFT required.  A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO in silver (US$70 million) and a fine replica by Tempero of a 1963 model in rosso corsa (US$1.2 million).

NFTs address one aspect of the problem associated with anything digital: the ease of creation of perfect replicas and real world analogies are illustrative of the need.  Ferrari made only thirty-nine 250 GTOs and one has sold for US$70 million but it’s possible for experts to create an almost exact replica, indeed one often of higher quality than an original but it will only ever be worth a fraction of the real thing.  With something digital, just about anyone can create an exact duplicate, indistinguishable from the source, hence the attraction of the NFT which, thus far, can’t be forged.  NFTs have been linked to real-world objects, as a sort of proof of ownership which seems strange given that actual possession or some physical certificate is usually sufficient, certainly for those with a 250 GTO in the garage but there are implications for the property conveyancing industry, NFTs possibly a way for real-estate transactions to be handled more efficiently.  For those producing items subject to much piracy (running shoes, handbags etc), there’s interest in attaching NFTs as a method of verification.

Viceroy

Viceroy (pronounced vahys-roi)

(1) A person appointed to rule a country or province as the deputy of the sovereign and exercising the powers of the sovereign.

(2) A brightly marked American butterfly (Limenitis archippus), closely mimicking the monarch butterfly in coloration but slightly smaller, hence the analogy with a sovereign and their representative.

1515–1525: From the Middle French, the construct being vice- + roy.  Vice was from the Old French vice (deputy), from the Latin vice (in place of), an ablative form of vicis.  In English (and other languages) the vice prefix was used to indicate an office in a subordinate position including air vice-marshal, vice-admiral, vice-captain, vice-chair, vice-chairman, vice-chancellor, vice-consul, vice-director, vice president, vice-president, vice-regent & vice-principal.  Roy was from the Middle English roy & roye, from the Old French roi (king), from the Latin rēgem, accusative of rēx (king) and related to regere (to keep straight, guide, lead, rule), from the primitive Indo-European root reg- (move in a straight line) with derivatives meaning “to direct in a straight line" thus the notion of "to lead, rule".  It was a doublet of loa, rajah, Rex, rex and rich.  The noun plurals was roys.  The wife of a viceroy was a vicereine, the word also used for female viceroys of whom there have been a few.  The American butterfly was named in 1881.  Viceroy and viceroy are nouns and viceregal is a noun and adjective; the noun plural is viceroys.

The noun viceregent (the official administrative deputy of a regent) attracted the attention of critics because it was so frequently confused with vicegerent (the official administrative deputy of a ruler, head of state, or church official).  Despite the perceived grandiosity of vicegerent, gained from association with offices such as the Pope as Vicar of Christ on Earth or the regent of a sovereign state, it’s merely generally descriptive of one person substituting for another and can be as well-applied to the shop assistant minding the store while the grocer has lunch.  The area of regency can be a linguistic tangle because a regent is a particular kind of viceregent and there was a time when viceregent was used instead of the correct vicegerent and was sometimes used pleonastically for regent.  The grammar Nazis never liked this and attributed the frequency of occurrence to the preference of viceregal rather than vicereoyal as the adjective of viceroy.

Under the Raj, under the pith helmets: King George V, Emperor of India with Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, Government House, Calcutta 1911.

In the rather haphazard way British rule in India evolved, the office of Governor-General of India was created by the Charter Act of 1833 and in an early example of the public-private partnership (PPP), the post was essentially administrative and was both appointed by and reported to the directors of the East India Company, functioning also as an informal conduit between the company and government.  The system lasted until 1858 when, in reaction to the Indian Mutiny (1857), the parliament passed the Government of India Act, creating the role of Viceroy (wholly assuming the office of Governor General), the new office having both executive and diplomatic authority and reporting (through the newly-established India Office) to the British Crown.  The viceroy was appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the parliament (ie the prime-minister) and it is this structure which is remembered as the British Raj (from the Hindi rāj (state, nation, empire, realm etc), the rule of the British Crown on the subcontinent although the maps of empire which covered the whole region as pink to indicate control were at least a bit misleading.

Viceroy butterfly.

The best-known viceroys were probably those who headed the executive government of India under the Raj although other less conspicuous appointments were also made including to Ireland when the whole island was a constituent part of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801-1922).  As a general principle (and there were exceptions), in British constitutional law, the Dominions and colonies that were held in the name of the parliament of Great Britain were administered by Governors-General while colonies held in the name of the British Crown were governed by viceroys.  Between 1858-1947, there were twenty viceroys of India including some notable names in British politics such as Lord Lansdowne (1888–1894) who introduced the Indian Councils Act and raised the age of consent for girls from ten to twelve, Lord Curzon (1899–1905) who introduced the Indian Universities Act and presided over the partition of Bengal, Lord Hardinge (1910-1916) who was in office during the Mesopotamian Campaign, Lord Irwin (1926–1931) (better known as Lord Halifax) who summoned the first round table conference and Lord Mountbatten (1947), the last Viceroy of India who, reflecting the change in constitutional status upon independence, was between 1947-1948 briefly the new nation's first Governor-General.  He was also the second-last, the office abolished in 1950 when the Republic of India was proclaimed.

Lindsay Lohan’s NFT for Lullaby with viceroy butterflies.

In 2021, it was announced Lindsay Lohan's non-fungible token (NFT) electronic music single Lullaby had sold for 1,000,001 in Tron (TRX) cryptocurrency (US$85,484.09).   Lullaby featured a vocal track over a beat produced by Manuel Riva and was the first NFT by a woman to be sold on #fansForever, a marketplace created for dealing in celebrity NFTs.  The graphics of the NFT Tron had a viceroy butterfly flapping its wings in unison with Ms Lohan’s eyelids to the beat of Lullaby.  Because of the underlying robustness, the blockchain and the NFT concept has an assured future for many purposes but to date the performance of celebrity items as stores of value has been patchy.

1936 Rolls-Royce Phantom III (7.7 litre (447 cubic inch) V12; chassis 3AZ47, engine Z24B, body 8594 in style 6419) by Hooper, built for the Marquess of Linlithgow (1887-1952) who served as Viceroy of India (1936-1944), seen in its original configuration with a chauffeur (left) and as re-bodied during 1952-1953 (right).  In the centre is a British plumed helmet, circa 1920, this one with a skull in gilt metal, mounted with unusually elaborate gilt ornamentation including helmet-plate (itself mounted with a white metal hobnail star bearing gilt Royal Arms), ornate gilt chins-scales with claw ends and an untypically extravagant white swan's feather plume, notably longer than regulation length.  It was used by the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at Arms, a body formed in 1539 and staffed by former army officers as the “nearest guard” to the sovereign. The helmet is based on the “Albert” pattern for Household Cavalry, a style in use for some 150 years.

Viceroys of India were always rather exalted creatures, their status reflecting India’s allure as the glittering prize of the empire and upon recall to London, were usually raised to (or in) the peerage as marquesses while a retiring prime-minister might expect at most an earldom, one notch down.  Their special needs (and some were quite needy) in office also had to be accommodated, an example of which is Lord Linlithgow’s 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III, built with a capacity for seven passengers (although no luggage which was always carried separately).  The coachwork by Hooper was most unusual, the engine’s side-panels being 1½ inches taller than standard, a variation required to somewhat balance the very tall passenger compartment, the dimensions of which were dictated by the viceroy’s height of 6’ 7” (2.0 m), the plumed hats of his role elongating things further.  Such high-roof-lines were not uncommon on state limousines and have been seen on Mercedes-Benz built for the Holy See and the Daimlers & Rolls-Royces in the British Royal Mews.  Delivered in dark blue with orange picking out lines and coronets on the rear doors, the interior was trimmed in dark blue leather with two sets of loose beige covers, the woodwork in solid figured walnut rather than veneer.  Signed-off 21 July 1936 and shipped to Bombay (now Mubai) on the SS Bhutan on 24 July, Hooper’s invoice to the India Office listed the price of the chassis at Stg£1405, the coachwork at Stg£725 and a total cost of Stg£2130.

After the Raj, the car passed into private hands and in 1952 was returned to the Hooper works in Westminster for re-modeling, the most obvious aspects of which were the lowering of the roof-line and a re-finishing in grey.  The high cowl (scuttle) and hood (bonnet) line were however retained so the re-configuration actually replaced one discontinuity with another but the changes certainly made it an interesting period piece and its now one of three Phantom IIIs in the collection assembled by Pranlal Bhogilal (1937-2011), displayed in his Auto World Vintage Car Museum in Kathwada, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

Bogus

Bogus (pronounced boh-guhs)

(1) Not genuine; counterfeit item; something spurious; a sham; based on false or misleading information or unjustified assumptions.

(2) In printing. a matter set (by union requirement) by a compositor and later discarded, duplicating the text of an advertisement for which a plate has been supplied or type set by another publisher.

(3) In computer programming, anything wrong, broken, unlinked, useless etc).

(4) In philately, a fictitious issue printed for exclusively for collectors, often issued as if from a non-existent territory or country (as opposed to a forgery, which is an illegitimate copy of a genuine stamp).

(5) As calibogus, a US dialectical word describing a liquor made from rum and molasses (sometimes rum and spruce beer).

1827: An invention of US English, coined originally by the underworld to describe an apparatus for coining counterfeit currency.  The origin is unknown, etymologists noting the Hausa boko (to fake) and because bogus first appeared in the US, it’s possible the source arrived on a slave ship from West Africa.  An alternative speculation is it was a clipped form of the nineteenth century criminal slang tantrabogus (a menacing object), from a late eighteenth century colloquial Vermont word for any odd-looking object (which in the following century was used also in Protestant churches to mean "the devil").  The New England form may be connected to tantarabobs (a regionalism recorded in Devonshire name for the devil) although the most obvious link (for which there’s no evidence) is to bogy or bogey (in the sense of “the bogeyman”).  In this sense, bogus might thus be related to bogle (a traditional trickster from the Scottish Borders, noted for achieving acts of household trickery which sometimes operated at the level of petty crime.  The use of bogy & bogie by the military is thought unrelated because the evidence is it didn’t pre-date the use of radar (a bogie being an unidentified aircraft or missile, especially one detected as a blip on a radar display).

The noun came first, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) tracing the first use to describe the counterfeiting apparatus to Ohio in 1927, the products of the nefarious minting having also picked up the name by at least 1838, adjectival use (counterfeit, spurious, sham) adopted the following year.  Later, bogus came to be applied to anything of poor quality, even if not something misrepresenting a brand-name (ie bogus in intended function).  The adoption by computer programmers (apparently in the 1980s) to refer to anything wrong, broken, unlinked, useless etc was an example of English in action; they could have chosen any of bogus’s many synonyms but it was the word of choice and hackers use it too.  Bogus is an adjective and (an occasional) noun, bogotic is an adjective, bogusly is an adverb and bogusness a noun.

From the nerdy humor of programmers came the related bogon, the construct being bog(us) (fake, phony) + -on (the suffix used to form names of elementary particles or fundamental units) (the noun plural being bogons).  To programmers, the bogon was the the imaginary elementary particle of bogosity; the anti-particle to the cluon (the construct being clue (idea, notion, inkling) + -on (the plural being cluons) which was the imaginary elementary particle of cluefulness and thus the anti-particle to the bogon.  The slightly less nerdy network engineers adopted bogan to refer to an invalid Internet Protocol (IP) packet, especially one sent from an address not in use.  Clutron proved useful, a clutron an especially clever or well-informed nerd although it was also picked-up in the misogynistic word of on-line gaming where a slutron was a highly skilled female player a combination where meant she attracted hatred rather than admiration a make would usually enjoy.

The surname Bogus was borrowed from the Polish (masculine & feminine) forms Bogus & Boguś, or the Romanian Boguș (the plural of the proper noun being Boguses).  In the British Isles it was initially most common in Scotland before spreading south and is thought ultimately related to other named beginning with Bog- (Bogumił, Bogusław, Bogdan et al).  In Polish, Boguś is also a given name and listed as a back-formation (as a diminutive) from either Bogusław, Bogdan, Bogumił or Bogusław (+ -uś).

A real Ferrari 1963 250 GTO (left) and Temporoa's superbly made replica of a 1962 model (right).  US$70 million vs US$1.2 million. 

The synonyms can include fraudulent, pseudo, fake, faux, phony, false, fictitious, forged, fraudulent, sham, spurious, artificial, dummy, ersatz, imitation, pretended, pseudo, simulated, counterfeit but bogus is what’s known as a “loaded word”.  Bogus implies fake (and less commonly “of poor quality”) but just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it need be thought bogus.  Ferrari made only 39 (it can also be calculated at 36 or 41 depending on definitions) 250 GTOs and one has sold for US$70 million but it’s possible for experts to create an almost exact replica (indeed one of higher quality than an original although given the standard of some of the welding done in the factory in those years that's really not surprising) but it will only ever be worth a fraction of the real thing (a fine example offered for US$1.2 million).  Whether such a thing should be regarded as a replica, recreation, clone or whatever is something about which there's debate but few would dismiss such a work as bogus.  It really hangs on disclosure and representation.  With only 39 250 GTOs on the planet, all with well-documented provenance, it’s not possible to claim a replica is authentic but there are cars which have been produced in the hundreds or even thousands which some try to pass off as genuine; in these cases, they have created something as bogus as knock-off handbags.  One popular use of bogus is to describe various members of royal families who parade themselves in the dress military uniforms of generals or admirals, despite often having never served on been near a combat zone.  

With something digital, just about anyone can create an exact duplicate, indistinguishable from the source, hence the attraction of the non-fungible token (NFT) which, thus far, can’t be forged.  NFTs have been linked to real-world objects, as a sort of proof of ownership which seems strange given that actual possession or some physical certificate is usually sufficient, certainly for those with a 250 GTO in the garage but there are implications for the property conveyancing industry, NFTs possibly a way for real-estate transactions to be handled more efficiently.  For those producing items which attract bogus items (running shoes, handbags etc), there’s interest in attaching NFTs as a method of verification.

Humble beginnings: Publicity shot for the 1960 Ford Falcon.

When Ford released the Falcon in 1960, it was modest in just about every way except the expectations the company had that it successfully would counter the intrusion of the increasingly popular smaller cars which, worryingly, many buyers seemed to prefer to the increasingly large offerings from Detroit.  A success in its own right, the Falcon would provide the platform for the Mustang, the Fairlane, the Mercury Cougar and other variations which, collectively, sold in numbers which would dwarf those achieved by the original; it was one of the more profitable and enduring platforms of the twentieth century.  In the US, it was retired after a truncated appearance in 1970 but it lived on in South America and Australia, the nameplate in the latter market lasting until 2016, a run of over half a century during which the platform had been offered in seven generations in configurations as diverse as sedans, vans & pick-ups (utes), hardtop coupés, 4WDs, station wagons and long wheelbase executive cars.

Ford Falcon GTHO Phase I leading three Holden Monaro (HT) GTS 350s, Bathurst 1969.

Most memorably however, between 1969-1972, it was also the basis of a number of thinly disguised racing cars, production of which was limited to not much more than was required by the rules of the time to homologate the strengthened or high-performance parts needed for use in competition.  The Falcon GT had been introduced in 1967 and had proved effective but the next year faced competition from General Motors’ (GM) Holden Monaro GTS which, with a 327 cubic inch (5.3 litre) Chevrolet V8 out-performed the Ford which had by then had benefited from an increase in displacement from 289 cubic inches (4.7 litres) to 302 (4.9) which proved not enough.  The conclusion reached by both Ford & GM was of course to increase power so for 1969 the Falcon and Monaro appears with 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) and 350 (5.7) V8s; the power race was on.  Ford however decided to make sure of things and developed homologation-special with more power, some modification to improve durability and, with endurance racing in mind, a 36 (imperial) gallon (164 litre) fuel tank, quickly (and inexpensively) fabricated by welding together two standard tanks.  The car was called the GTHO (written variously in documents as also as G*T*H*O, GT-HO & G.T.H.O. (and as GT·HO on the glovebox lid)), HO apparently understood by the Ford engineers to mean “high output” but presented to the public as “handling options”, the company not wishing to frighten the horses with fears of racing cars being sold for use on the streets (and such a furore did ensue in 1972 which proved the GTHO’s death knell.

1970 Falcon GTHO Phase II.

If the 1967 GT had been something beyond what Ford in 1960 thought the Falcon might become, the GTHO would have been beyond their wildest imaginings.  Still usable as a road car, it also worked on the circuits although, because of a bad choice of tyre which was unsuited to the techniques of the drivers, it failed to win the annual Bathurst 500, then (as now), the race which really mattered.  Determined to win the 500, a revised GTHO was prepared and, in a novel move, was known as the Phase II (the original retrospectively re-christened the Phase I), the most obvious highlight of the revised specification a switch to Ford’s new Cleveland 351 V8 which, heavier and more powerful, replaced the Windsor 351.  Underneath however, there were changes which were just as significant with the suspension re-calibrated to suit both racing tyres and the driving style used in competition.  Said to have been developed with “a bucket of Ford’s money in one hand and a relief map of the Bathurst circuit in the other”, the Phase II drove like a real racer and probably few cars sold to the public have deliberately been engineered to produce so much oversteer.  On the track it worked and victory at Bathurst followed, something which drew attention from the early unreliability of the Cleveland 351, the implications of it’s less elaborate lubrication system not for some months appreciated.

1971 Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III (Clone).

The Phase III followed in 1971 with increased power, the propensity to oversteer toned down and it proved even more successful, the legacy due to be continued by a Phase IV with four-wheel disk brakes (something probably more helpful than more power) but the project was abandoned after a moral panic induced by a Sydney newspaper which ran a front page which alleged “160mph (257 km/h) supercars” were about to fall into the hands of teenagers to use on city streets and highways.  That certainly frightened the horses and politicians, always susceptible to anything which appears in a tabloid, vowed to act and prevailed on the manufacturers to abandon the homologation specials.  Thus ended the era of the GTHO and also the similar machines being prepared by GM and Chrysler, the handful of Phase IV GTHOs built quietly sold off, never to see a race track although one did, most improbably, enjoy a brief, doomed career as a rally car.

1972 Ford Falcon GTHO Phase IV.

Over the decades, as used cars, the surviving GTHOs (many destroyed in accidents on and off the track) have become collectable and of the 1222 made (including circa 115 of the (unofficial) Phase 1.5 with a milder (hydraulic valve lifters) Cleveland engine), it’s the Phase III (300 built) which is the most coveted at auction (the handful of Phase IVs seem to change hands mostly in private sales and the record is said to be circa Aus$2 million) and while the prices achieved track the state of the economy, the current record is believed to be Aus$1.3 million.  Based on what was essentially a taxicab which was produced in the hundreds of thousands, there’s an after-market ecosystem which produces all the parts required for one exactly (except for tags and serial numbers) to create one’s own GTHO at considerably less than what a real one now costs so it’s no surprise there are many acknowledged replicas (also described as clones etc) but the odd bogus example has also been unearthed.

Ford Falcon GTHO Phase IVs being prepared for racing, Melbourne, 1972.

Quite how many of the 287 Phase IIs survive isn’t known and the prices are high so it’s little surprise some have been tempted to misrepresent a bogus example as something real and there are legal implications to this, both criminal and civil.  There are even examples of the less desirable Falcon GTs and in 2011, in a judgment handed down in the District Court of Queensland (Sammut v De Rome [2011] QDC 294), a couple was ordered to pay the plaintiff AU$108,394.04 (US$107,200 at the then favorable exchange rate).  The defendants had sold to the plaintiff what they advertised as a 1969 Ford Falcon GT, a vehicle they had in 2006 purchased for Aus$18,000.  The plaintiff undertook due diligence, inspecting the car in person and in the company of a expert in bodywork before verifying with Ford Australia that the VIN (vehicle identification number) was legitimate car.  Once the VIN had been confirmed as belonging to a 1969 Falcon GT, a sale price of Aus$90,000 was agreed and the sale executed, the buyer having the car transported by trailer to Sydney.

Bogus & blotchy: Lindsay Lohan with fake tan.

Two years later, when the plaintiff attempted to sell the car, a detailed inspection revealed it was a bogus GT, a real GT’s VIN having been used to replace the one mounted on an ordinary 1969 Falcon, an x-ray examination of the firewall confirming the cutting and welding associated with the swap.  It was never determined who was responsible for creating the bogus GT and expert testimony given to the court confirmed that then, a non-GT Falcon of this year and condition was worth between Aus$10-15,000 while the value of an authentic GT was between Aus$65-70,000.  Accordingly, the plaintiff sued for breach of contract, requesting to be compensated to the extent of the difference between what he paid for the car and its current value, plus associated matters such as transport, interest and court costs.  The court found for the plaintiff in the sum of Aus$108,394.04 although the trial judge did note that the defendants likely didn't know the car was bogus, thereby opening for them the possibility of commencing action against the party from whom they purchased the thing, his honor mentioned that because of the civil statute of limitations, they had less than a month in which to file suit.  It's to be hoped they kept the car because in 2022, well-executed replicas of XW Falcon GTs are being advertised at more than Aus$125,000.

Cash

Cash (pronounced kash)

(1) Money in the form of coins or banknotes, historically that issued by a government or a bank or other financial institution operating with the approval of a government.

(2) Money or an equivalent paid at the time of making a purchase.

(3) Immediate payment, in full or part, for goods or services, even if not paid in physical cash (ie as distinct from the various forms of time (delayed) payment).

(4) To give or obtain cash for a check, money order, bill of exchange etc.

(5) In some games of cards, (1) to win (a trick) by leading an assured winner or (2) to lead (an assured winner) in order to win a trick.

(6) Any of several low-denomination coins of China, Vietnam, India, and the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), especially the Chinese copper coin.

1590–1600: From the Portuguese caixa, from the Tamil காசு (kācu) (a copper coin), from the Sanskrit karṣa (a weight (of precious metal such as silver or gold)).  There was also the sixteenth century Old Italian cassa (money box) from the Latin capsa (case).  Variation of cash appear in many languages including the Japanese: キャッシュ (kyasshu), the Serbo-Croatian (kȅš & ке̏ш) the Romanian cash and the Swedish cash.

Cashable is an adjective, cashability & cashableness are nouns.  The noun plural is cash (except for the proper noun; the surname’s plural being Cashes).  The homophone of cash is cache, often mispronounced as kaache although cache’s adoption as a technical term in computing has led some to suggest kaache should be the use in the industry with kash for all other purposes and there’s much support for the view which does make sense, even if, given the specificity of the context, confusion is unlikely.  The verb cashier (and the related cashiering & cashiered) is (1) the simple past tense and past participle of cashier and (2) the apparently curious term for the dismissal of a military officer, cashiered in this context from the Dutch casseren & kasseren, from the Old French casser (to break (up)).  During a ceremonial cashiering, the break of his link with the military was sometimes symbolized dramatically by literally breaking the officer’s sword (which had in advance been partly sawn through).   

The surname appears to be an American variant of Case, the records indicating it was first adopted by in the US by German immigrants named Kirch and Kirsch, an example of the Anglicization of names once a common of those migrating to the English-speaking world.  In rare cases it has been used a male given name, often as a second name reflecting the mother’s maiden name.  A cashier (person in charge of money), dates from the 1590s, from the French caissier (treasurer), from caisse (money box), the immediate source of the English word perhaps the Middle Dutch kassier.

Lindsay Lohan themed cash.  Unfortunately, these Lohanic notes are not issued by the US Federal Reserve and thus neither legal tender nor readily convertible (at least at face-value) to other currencies.  However, Lindsay Lohan is dabbling in the embroynic world of the NFT (non fungible token) which may evolve to have some influence on the development of how cash is stored and exchanged (if not valued).   

In idiomatic use, cashing-in one’s chips means literally to take one’s winnings and leave the casino but is also used to mean “to die” whereas cashing-up is a technical term from business referring to the end-of-day audit & balancing procedures.  A moneybags (ie bags full of cash) is someone (usually conspicuously) rich.  A cash-cow is a product or service which dependably provides the owner or operator a lucrative profit.  A cash-crop (agricultural product grown to sell for profit) is attested from 1831 and was distinct from one with some other primary purpose (such as for self-sustenance or stock-feed).  A cash-back is a trick in advertising and a form of discount.  The phrase cold, hard cash is another way of emphasizing the primacy of money.  A cash-book (which historically were physical ledgers but most are now electronic) was a transactional register.  To cash was “to convert (a cheque (the US check) or other bill of exchange) to cash", known since 1811 as a variation of the noun and the now-extinct encash from 1865 was also used as a piece of specialized jargon meaning exactly the same thing; it was replaced as required by cashed & cashing.  The cash-box (also called money-box), dating from the 1590s, was (and remains) a box for the safe-keeping physical cash and was from the sixteenth century French caisse (money box), from the Provençal caissa or the Italian cassa, from the Anglo-Norman & Old French casse (money box), from the Latin capsa (box, case) ultimately from capiō (I take, I seize, I receive), from the primitive Indo-European kehp- (to grasp) (which also led to the Spanish caja (box); the original sense was literally the wooden or metal box by the eighteenth century, the secondary sense of the money began to run is parallel before, for most purposes, becoming the sole meaning.  To cash in is to profit from something, applying it one's advantage.  A cash-register, dating from 1875, was historically a mechanical device used to record transactions and issue receipts, such machines now mostly electronic and increasingly linked to centralized (even international) databases; in Jewish humorous use, a cash-register was “a Jewish piano”.  Cash-flow (which surprisingly seems to date only from 1954) refers to a specific characteristic of business and means the periodic accumulation of disposable revenue to permit the operations always to meet its obligations and continue trading; it’s not directly related to long-term profitability in that something with a good cash-flow can continue indefinitely while only breaking even while a profitable concern with a poorly managed cash-flow can flounder.  In commerce, use is common such as cash-and-carry, cash account, cash-only, discount for cash etc although transaction handling costs have affected the last: where once it was common for businesses to offer a discount to customers paying with physical cash (sometimes because it offered the possibility of a hidden (ie un-taxed) transaction, it’s now not uncommon for a fee to be imposed, reflecting the difference in processing costs for weightless (electronic) payments compared with the physical (notes & coins).  In criminal slang, "cash" is said to be a euphemism for “to do away with, to kill” the word "disband" also carrying this meaning and both “cash” and “disband” are reputed to be used on the dark web as code by those offering contract killing although such things are hard to verify and may be an internet myth. Cash on delivery (COD) dates from 1859 and was an invention of American commerce designed to encourage sales from businesses previously unknown to the individual consumer.  Cashless (often as cashless-society or cashless transaction) refers usually to the elimination of physical money (ie notes and coins), something sought by many bureaucrats for various reasons although of concern to civil libertarians.

According to anthropologists, the word cash (money and all that) is really derived from the word kash, a beer brewed in Ancient Egypt which was used to pay workers (including the builders of the Great Pyramids).  Stone cutters, slaves, architects, and even public officials were often paid (at least in part) with beer, two containers of kash often set as the minimum wage for an Egyptian laborer’s day of work.  At the time, there was quite a brewing industry, the Egyptians known to be distributing at least six varieties of beer by 3,000 BC and there is evidence it played a part in the social conventions of the age: in some circumstances if a man offered a lady a sip of his beer, they could be held to be betrothed so dating could be minefield for those who’d drunk too much.

The traditions associated with kash spread.  In Mesopotamia, tavern owners found guilty of overcharging patrons for beer could be sentenced to death by drowning in the Tigris or Euphrates rivers (depending on where the establishment was located) although most punishments were apparently commuted to fines.  The Ancient Babylonians, serious about beer making, to regulate quality decreed that any commercial beer maker who sold unfit beer was to be drowned in that very impure libation although no records exist which confirm how many were actually suck in their own dodgy brew.  The most attractive Babylonian tale (although not one all historians accept) is that more happily, a bride’s father would supply all the “honey" kash (a form of kash to which honey and sweet herbs were added) the groom could drink for one month after the wedding.  Because the calendar was lunar based, this month was referred to as the “honey moon”.