Comet

Comet (pronounced kom-it)

(1) In astronomy, a celestial body moving about the sun, usually in a highly eccentric orbit, most thought to consist of a solid frozen nucleus, part of which vaporizes on approaching the heat from Sun (or other star) to form a gaseous, luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas, the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).

(2) In astronomy, a celestial phenomenon with the appearance of such a body.

(3) Any of several species of hummingbird found in the Andes.

(4) In slang, as “vomit comet”, a reduced-gravity aircraft which, by flying in a parabolic flight path, briefly emulates a close to weightless environment.  Used to train astronauts or conduct research, the slang derived from the nausea some experience.

(5) In figurative use (often applied retrospectively and with a modifier such as “blazing comet”), someone (or, less commonly, something) who appears suddenly in the public eye, makes a significant impact and then quickly fades from view, their fleeting moment of brilliance a brief but spectacular event.

1150–1200: From the Middle English comete, partly from the Old English comēta and partly from the Anglo-French & Old French comete (which in Modern French persists as comète), all from the Latin comētēs & comēta, from the Ancient Greek κομήτης (komḗtēs) (wearing long hair; ling-haired), the construct being komē-, a variant stem of komân (to let one's hair grow), from κόμη (kómē) (hair) + -tēs (the agent suffix).  The Greek was a shortened form of ἀστὴρ κομήτης (astēr komētēs (longhaired star)), a reference to a comet’s streaming tail.  The descendants in other languages include the Malay komet, the Urdu کومٹ (komeṭ) and the Welsh comed.  Comet, cometlessness, cometography, cometographer, cometology & cometarium are nouns, cometless, cometic, cometical, cometocentric, cometary, cometographical & cometlike (also as comet-like) are adjectives, cometesimal is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is comets.

Comets orbit the Sun along an elongated path and when not near the heat, the body consists solely of its nucleus, thought to be almost always a solid core of frozen water, frozen gases, and dust.  When near the sun, the nucleus heats, eventually to boil and thus release the gaseous and luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas), the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).  The path of a comet can be in the shape of an ellipse or a hyperbola; if a hyperbolic path, it enters the solar system once and then leaves forever while if it follows an ellipse, it remains in orbit around the sun.  Astronomer divide comets into (1) “short period” (those with orbital periods of less than 200 years and coming from the Kuiper belt) and (2) “long-period” (those with an orbital period greater than 200 years and coming from the Oort cloud).

Before the development of modern techniques, comets were visible only when near the sun so their appearance was sudden and, until early astronomers were able to calculate the paths of those which re-appeared, unexpected.  Superstition stepped in where science didn’t exist and comets were in many cultures regarded as omens or harbingers of doom, famine, ruin, pestilence and the overthrow of kingdoms or empires.  It was the English astronomer, mathematician and physicist Edmond Halley (1656–1742; Astronomer Royal 1720-1742) who in 1682 published the calculations which proved many comets were periodic and thus their appearance could be predicted.  Halley's Comet, named in his honor, remains the only known short-period comet consistently visible from Earth with the naked eye and remains the world’s most famous; it last appeared in 1986 and will next visit our skies in 2061.

Comet wine: Non-vintage Alois Lageder Natsch4 Vigneti Delle Dolomiti.

Halley’s findings put an end to (most) of the superstition surrounding comets but commerce still took advantage of their presence.  A comet with a famously vivid tail appeared in 1811 and in that year, Europe enjoyed a remarkably pleasant autumn (fall) which was most conducive to agriculture and became associated with the abundant and superior yield of the continental vineyards.  For that reason, the vintage was called the “comet wine” and the term became a feature in marketing the product which emerged from any year in which notable comets were seen, a superior quality alleged (and thus a premium price).  Wine buffs say any relationship between the quality of a vintage and the travel of celestial bodies is entirely coincidental.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (2021) by Dr Heather Clark (b 1974).

One of things about the feminist cult which is now the construct of Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is that her mistreatment at the hands of her husband Ted Hughes (1930–1998; Poet Laureate 1984-2008) tends to obscure her work which many quite familiar with the story of her brief life will barely have read and that’s perhaps predictable, certainly for those for whom the lure of tales of tragic woman and brutish men is a siren.  As human tragedies go, her story is compelling: A precocious talent, the death of the father to whom she was devoted when only eight, the suicide attempt while a student and the burning ambition to write and be published.  Almost as soon as she met Ted Hughes she knew he was “my black marauder” and their affair was one of intense physicality as well as a devotion to their art, something which might have endured during their marriage (which produced two children) had Hughes not proved so unfaithful and neglectful.  In 1963, as an abandoned solo mother in a freezing flat during what entered history as London’s coldest winter of the century, she took her own life while her two babies slept nearby, becoming a symbol onto which people would map whatever most suited their purposes: the troubled genius, the visionary writer, a feminist pioneer and, overwhelmingly, a martyr, a victim of a man.  To his dying day, feminists would stalk literary events just to tell Hughes he had “Sylvia’s blood on his hands”.

So the story is well known and in the years since her death there have been a number of biographies, critical studies, collections of letters, academic conferences; given that, it’s seemed by the 2020s unlikely there was much more to say about one whose adult life spanned not even two decades.  For that reason the 1000-odd densely printed pages of Dr Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath was a revelation because, as the author pointed out, her life “has been subsumed by her afterlife” and what was needed was a volume which focused on what she wrote and why that output means she should be set free from the “cultural baggage of the past 50 years” and shown as “one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.”

Sylvia Plath in Paris, 1956.

Red Comet is thus far this century’s outstanding biography and a feminist perspective is not required to recognize that when reading her last poems (written in obvious rage but sustaining a controlled tension few have matched) that she was a profoundly disturbed woman.  Most clinicians who have commented seem now to agree her depression of long-standing had descended to something psychotic by the time of her suicide, a progression she seems to have acknowledged, writing to one correspondent that she was composing poetry “on the edge of madness”.  This is though a biography written by a professional literary critic so it does not construct Plath as tale of tragedy and victimhood as one might if telling the story of some troubled celebrity.  Instead, the life is allowed to unfold in a way which shows how it underpins her development as a writer, the events and other glimpses of the person interpolated into the progress of a text through drafts and revisions, each word polished as the poet progresses to what gets sent to the publisher.  Red Comet is not a book for those interested in how much blame Ted Hughes should bear for his wife killing herself and in that matter it’s unlikely to change many opinions but as a study of the art of Sylvia Plath, it’s outstanding.  Unlike many figurative uses of "comet", Plath continues to blaze her trail. 

Pre-production de Havilland Comet (DH 106) with the original, square windows, England, 1949 (left) and Comet 4 (Registration G-APDN) in BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-1974 which in 1974 was merged with BEA (British European Airways) and others to later become BA (British Airways)) livery, Tokyo (Haneda International (HND / RJTT)), Japan October 1960.

The term hoodoo is often attached to objects thought jinxed.  When the de Havilland Comet (DH 106; the first commercial jet airliner), within a year of its first flight in 1949, began to suffer a number of catastrophic in-flight accidents, newspapers wrote of the “Comet hoodoo”, something encouraged because, in the pre “black-box” era, analysis of aviation incidents was a less exact science than now and for some time the crashes appeared inexplicable.  It was only when extensive testing revealed the reason for the structural failures could be traced to stresses in the airframe induced aspects of the design that the hoodoo was understood to be the operation of physics.  Other manufacturers noted the findings and changed their designs, Boeing's engineers acknowledging the debt they owed to de Havilland because it was the investigation of the Comet's early problems which produced the solutions which helped the Boeing 707 (1957) and its many successors to be the successful workhorses they became.  As a footnote, by the time the Comet 4 was released in 1958 the problems had been solved but commercially, the project was doomed and reputational damage done.  Between 1949-1964, barely more than 100 were sold although many did provide reliable service until 1981 and the airframe proved adaptable, dozens of military variants produced, the most notable being the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, a maritime patrol version which was in service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 2011.

It’s because of the lessons learned from the Comet hoodoo that the apertures of airliner windows have rounded edges, the traditional four-cornered openings creating four weak spots prone to failure under stress.  In the early 1950s there was much optimism about the Comet and had it been successful, it could have given the UK’s commercial aviation industry a lead in a sector which rapidly would expand in the post war years.  One who didn’t express much faith in his country’s capacity to succeed in the field was the politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) who, shortly before taking up his appointment as the UK’s ambassador to France, was flying on an Avro York (a transport and civil adaptation of the Lancaster heavy bomber) and he noted in his diary: “I think the designer of the York has discovered the shape of an armchair in which it is quite impossible to be comfortable, if this is typical of the civil transport plane in which were are to compete against the US, we are already beaten.”  As Lindsay Lohan’s smiles indicate, as least on private jets, the seats are now comfortable.

Not quite an Edsel, not yet a Mercury: The 1960 Comet; it was an era of imaginative (other use different adjectives) styling (and at this time they were still "stylists" and not "designers").

The Mercury Comet, built in four generations between 1960-1969 and another between 1971-1977, had a most unusual beginning.  The Ford Motor Company (“FoMoCo”, Mercury’s parent corporation) had in the mid 1950s studied the five-tier (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac) branding used by General Motors (GM) and decided it too would create a five divisional structure (which by 1955 Chrysler had also matched).  The GM model dated from the 1920s and was called the “ladder” (GM at times had as many as nine rungs) and the idea was each step on the later would take a buyer into a higher price (and at least theoretically more profitable) range of models.  There was a time when this approach made sense but even in the 1950s when Ford embarked on their restructure it was beginning to fragment, the implications of which would become apparent over the decades.  Thus Ford ended up (briefly) with five divisions: Ford, Mercury, Edsel, Lincoln and Continental.  That didn’t last long and Continental was the first to go, followed soon by the still infamous Edsel and the corporation even flirted with the idea of shuttering Lincoln.

1963 Mercury Comet S-22 Convertible.

The original plan had been for the Comet to be the “small Edsel” but by the time the release date drew close, the decision had been taken to terminate the Edsel brand so the Q&D (quick & dirty) solution was to sell the car through the Lincoln-Mercury dealer network, an expedient which lasted for the 1960 & 1961 model years before the Comet was integrated into the Mercury range and badged appropriately.  The early Comets were built on the Falcon platform (“compact” in contemporary US terms) but when the 1966 range was released, the cars became “intermediates” (ie the size between the “compact” and “full-size” platforms).  The Comet name was withdrawn from use after 1969 but was in 1971 revived for Mercury’s companion to the Maverick, Ford’s replacement for the compact Falcon which slotted above the Pinto which was smaller, requiring the industry to coin the class-designation “sub compact”.  Cheap to produce and essentially a “consumer disposable”, the Maverick and Comet proved so popular they continued in production for a season even after their nominal replacements were in showrooms.

1967 Mercury Comet Cyclone "R Code", one of 60 built that year with the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) FE side-oiler V8 and one of the 19 with a four-speed manual transmission.

The Mercury Comet has never attracted great interest from collectors because few were built with the more robust or exotic drive-trains found more frequently in both the competition from GM & Chrysler and the companion versions from Ford.  The mid-range performance package for the general market was the Comet Cyclone, introduced in 1964 to replace the Comet’s earlier S-22 option; neither were big sellers but they were not expensive to produce and remained profitable parts of the Mercury range.  In 1968, during the peak of the muscle car era, Mercury sought to promote the line, dropping the Comet name and promoting the machines as the “Cyclone”, now with quite potent engines although the emphasis clearly was drag racing rather than turning corners; the high performance package was now called the “Cyclone Spoiler”.  For the NASCAR circuits however, there was in 1969 the Cyclone Spoiler II, one of the so-called “aero cars”, the better known of which were the much more spectacular, be-winged Dodge Daytona (1969) and Plymouth Superbird (1970).  Chrysler’s cars looked radical to achieve what they did but the modifications which created the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II and Ford Torino Talladega were so subtle as to be barely noticeable, the most effective being the increased slope on the lengthened nose, the flush grill and some changes which had the effect of lowering both the centre of gravity and the body.  The Ford and Mercury might have been a less spectacular sight than the Dodge or Plymouth but on the tracks the seeming slight tweaks did the job and both were among the fastest and most successful of their brief era.

1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (slab-sided but slippery, left), 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler (sleek but less aerodynamic than its predecessor, centre) and the aborted 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (handicapped out of contention by NASCAR, right).   

In 1970, just how aerodynamic was the 1969 Cyclone Spoiler was proved when the racing teams tried the new model which, although it looked sleek, was not as aerodynamically efficient and noticeably slower.  That might seem something of an own goal but Ford were blindsided by NASCAR’s decision to render the low-volume “aero cars” uncompetitive by restricting them to the use of 305 cubic inch (5.0 litre) engines while the conventional bodies were permitted to use the full 430 (7.0).  Thus the aerodynamic modifications planned for the 1970 Torino and Cyclone never entered production.  Of the two prototype Cyclone Spoiler IIs built, one survives revealing a nose which was in its own way as radical as those earlier seen on the Plymouth and Dodge.  In the collector market, the aero cars are much sought but the Cyclones are the least valued which may seem strange because they were on the circuits among the most successful of the era.  Market analysts attribute this to (1) the Cyclone Spoiler II (and Torino Talladega) being visually much less eye-catching than the wild-looking pair from Chrysler and (2) the Cyclone Spoiler II being sold only with a modest 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) engine whereas the Fords ran 428s (7.0) and the Chryslers 440 (7.2) & 426 (6.9) units, the latter a version of the engine actually used in the race cars.

The highly qualified Kate Upton (b 1992) was in 2014 featured in a Sports Illustrated session filmed in a "vomit comet" (a modified Boeing 727 with a padded interior). 

TikToker

TikToker (pronounced tik-tok-ah)

(1) One who is a regular or frequent viewer of the content posted on the short-form video (which, with mission-creep, can in certain circumstances now be up to sixty (60) minutes in duration) sharing site TikTok.com.

(2) One who is a regular or frequent content provider on the TikTok platform.

(3) With a variety of spellings (ticktocker, tictoker, tiktoka etc), a slang term for a clock or watch, derived from the alternating ticking sound, as that made by a clock (archaic).

(4) In computing, with the spelling ticktocker (or ticktocker), slang for a software element which emulates the sound of a ticking clock, used usually in conjunction with digitals depictions of analogue clocks.

2018: The ancestor form (ticktock or tick-tock) seems not to have been used until the mid-nineteenth century and was purely imitative of the sound of mechanical clocks. Tick (in the sense of "a quiet but sharp sound") was from the Middle English tek (light touch, tap) and tock was also onomatopoeic; when used in conjunction with tick was a reference to the clicking sounds similar to those made by the movements of a mechanical clock.  The use of TikToker (in the sense of relating to users (consumers & content providers) of the short-form video (which, with mission-creep, can be up to ten (10) minutes in duration) sharing site TikTok.com probably began in 2018 (the first documented reference) although it may early have been in oral use.  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  TikToker is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is TikTokers (the mixed upper & lower case is correct by commercial convention but not always followed).  The PRC- (People’s Republic of China) based holding company ByteDance is said to have chosen the name “TikTok” because it was something suggestive of the “short, snappy” nature of the platform’s content; they understood the target market and its alleged attention span (which, like the memory famously associated with goldfish might be misleading).

A blonde Billie Eilish, Vogue, June, 2021.

Those who use TikTok (whether as content providers or consumers) are called “tiktokers” and the longer the aggregate duration of one’s engagement with the platform, the more of a tiktoker one can be said to be.  The formation followed the earlier, self-explanatory “YouTuber” and the use for similar purposes (indicating association) for at least decades.  So the noun tiktoker is a neutral descriptor but it can also be used as a slur.   In February 2024, at the People’s Choice Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles, singer Billie Eilish (b 2001) was filmed leaning over to Kylie Minogue (b 1968) ,making the sotto voce remark “There’s some, like, TikTokers here…” with the sort of distaste Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792) might have displayed if indicating to her companion the unpleasing presence of peasants.  The clip went viral on X (formerly known as Twitter) before spreading to Tiktok.  Clearly there is a feeling of hierarchy in the industry and her comments triggered some discussion about the place of essentially amateur content creators at mainstream Hollywood (and such) events.  That may sound strange given a platform like TikTok would, prima facie, seem the very definition of the “people’s choice” but these events have their own history, associations and connotations and what social media sites have done to the distribution models has been quite a disturbance.  Many established players, even some who have to some extent benefited from the platforms, find disquieting the intrusion of the “plague of TikTokers”.

Pop Crave's clip of the moment, a brunette Billie Eilish & Kylie Minogue, People's Choice Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, February 2024.

There will be layers to Ms Eilish’s view.  One is explained in terms of mere proximity, the segregation of pop culture celebrities into “A List”, B List, D List” etc, an important component of the creation and maintenance of one’s public image and an A Lister like her would not appreciate being photographed at an event with those well up (ie down) the alphabet sitting at the next table; it cheapens her image.  Properly managed, these images can translate into millions (and these days even billions) of dollars so this is not a matter of mere vanity and something for awards ceremonies to consider; if the TikTokers come to be seen as devaluing their brand to the extent the A Listers ignore their invitations, the events either have to move to a down-market niche or just be cancelled.  Marshall McLuhan’s (1911-1980) book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) pre-dates social media by decades but its best-remembered phrase (“The medium is the message”) could have been coined for the era, the idea being the medium on which content is distributed should be the first point of understanding its significance, rather than actual content, the theory being the initial assessment of the veracity or the value of something relies on its source.  In the case of pop music, this meant a song distributed by a major label possessed an inherent credibility and prestige in a way something sung by a busker in a train station did not.  What the existence of YouTube and TikTok meant was the buskers and the artists signed to labels began suddenly to appear on the same medium, thus at some level gaining a sort of equivalency.  On TikTok, it’s all the same screen.

On trend: Lindsay Lohan announces she is now a Tiktoker.

Ms Eilish and her label have been adept at using the socials as tools for this and that so presumably neither object to the existence or the technology of the sites (although her label (Universal Music) has only recently settled its dispute with TikTok over the revenue sharing) but there will be an understanding that while there’s now no alternative to, in a sense, sharing the digital space and letting the people choose, that doesn’t mean she’ll be happy about being in the same photo frame when the trophies are handed out.  Clearly, there are stars and there are TikTokers and while the latter can (and have) become the former, there are barriers not all can cross.

1966 Jaguar Mark X 4.2 (left), 1968 Dodge Charger RT 440 (centre) and 1981 Mercedes-Benz 500 SLC (right).  Only the Americans called the shared tachometer/clock a “Tic-Toc Tach”.

Jaguar had long been locating a small clock at the bottom of the tachometer but in 1963 began to move the device to the centre of the dashboard, phasing in the change as models were updated or replaced.  By 1968 the horological shift was almost complete (only the last of the Mark II (now known as 240, 340 & Daimler V8 250) models still with the shared dial) and it was then Chrysler adopted the idea although, with a flair the British never showed, they called it the "Tic-Toc-Tachometer.  Popularly known as the “Tic-Toc Tach”, it was also used by other US manufacturers during the era, the attraction being an economical use of dash space, the clock fitting in a space at the centre of the tachometer dial which would otherwise be unused.  Mercedes-Benz picked up Jaguar's now abandoned concept in 1971 when the 350 SL (R107) was introduced and it spread throughout the range, almost universal after 1981 when production of the 600 (W100) ended; Mercedes-Benz would for decades use the shared instrument.  A tachometer (often called a “rev counter”) is a device for measuring the revolutions per minute (RPMs) of a revolving shaft such as the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine (ICE) (thus determining the “engine speed”).  The construct was tacho- (an alternative form of tachy-, from the Ancient Greek ταχύς (takhús) (rapid) + meter (the suffix from the Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron) (measure) used to form the names of measuring devices).

1967 Oldsmobile 4-4-2.

Nobody however crammed more into a tic-toc-tach than Oldsmobile which during the first generation (1964-1967) of its 4-4-2 also included a temperature gauge, ammeter and oil pressure gauge, something necessitated because the instrument panel the stylists were compelled to use contained only two pods.  When the second generation (1968-1972) was released, the dash included a third pod so the ancillary gauges were given their own space and a true tic-toc-tach was used.  Thankfully, nobody seems ever to have attempted to coin a term for five-function device on the early 4-4-2s so those who worry about such things must content themselves with choices like “enhanced tic-toc-tach” or “augmented tic-toc-tach”.  Buyers got the instrument with its “perimeter auxiliary gauges” by choosing option code U21 (Rallye Pac with Tachometer and Clock) for US$84.26 which sounds modest but at the time the bikini-clad and neoprene-tailed “mermaids” who splashed around the coral reef in the middle of Submarine Lagoon at California’s Disneyland Resort were paid US$65.00 a week.  Making a virtue of necessity, Oldsmobile described the cluttered device as a “compact instrument cluster [which] lets driver monitor engine performance at a glance”, not burdening brochure readers with the fact the Rallye Pac wasn’t planned as part of the range and with only two pods on the dash, there was no other way elegantly to fit everything.

1967 Oldsmobile 4-4-2 Holiday Coupe W-30.

The 4-4-2 was Oldsmobile’s response to the Pontiac GTO, introduced in 1964 by the companion GM (General Motors) division.  The GTO (Pontiac shamelessly “borrowing” the name from Ferrari’s 250 GTO (Gran Turismo Omologato (ie car homologated for competition in the GT (grand-touring) category) was the template for the “muscle car” genre of the 1960s in that it used a big V8 from the full-sized range in the smaller, lighter, intermediate platform.  It was actually an old idea practiced on both sides of the Atlantic since the 1920s but the GTO institutionalized the concept and made it a commercial proposition on a scale never before known because of the then unique conjunction in 1960s America of a large cohort of males aged 17-25 with enough disposable income (or credit-worthiness) to pay for such things.  The GTO existed because Pontiac threaded the configuration through a loophole in the GM corporate rules designed to prevent such things being produced for road use but it sold in such volume at a pleasing profit margin that management’s scruples rapidly were discarded and the crazy years of the muscle car began.  The GTO of course encouraged imitators from Ford, Chrysler and (eventually) even AMC but it also compelled three of GM’s other divisions (Chevrolet, Buick & Oldsmobile) to do their own interpretations.  Only Cadillac stood aloof but in 1970 they did put a 500 cubic inch (8.2 litre) V8 rated at 400 (gross) horsepower in the FWD (front-wheel-drive) Eldorado which sounds daft but the engineers disguised its inherent tendencies very well.

1970 Oldsmobile 442 Convertible, Official Pace Car (Indianapolis 500) Edition.

Though not original, GTO was of course a great name and the best Oldsmobile’s product-planners could come up with was 4-4-2, an allusion to the configuration (front to rear) of a four barrel carburetor, a four-speed manual gearbox and dual-exhausts.  Once explained it made sense but it remained a flaky name, something suffered by later imitators, Dodge’s “Super Bee” as good a car as Plymouth’s Road Runner but with nothing like the same brand-appeal.  Like Pontiac’s GTO, the 4-4-2 was originally an option package but such was the market response both became regular production models.  As it turned out, 4-4-2 was “just a name” rather than a promise because in 1965 when, in order to be advertise the things at a lower base-price, a three-speed gearbox became standard with the four-speed moved to the option list but there was no 4-3-2: 4-4-2 they all remained which made sense because at various times it could be ordered also with two or three-speed automatic gearboxes, none of which ever were dubbed 4-2-2 or 4-3-2.  However, in an inconsistency at the time not untypical in the industry, although in 1968 the badge was changed from “4-4-2” to “442”, both descriptions continued for years to appear in documents and sales literature.

Conventions in English and Ablaut Reduplication

In 2016, the BBC explained why we always say “tick tock” rather than “tock-tic” although, based on the ticking of the clocks at the time the phrase originated, there would seem to be no objective reasons why one would prevail over the other but the “rule” can be constructed thus: “If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O.  If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O which is why we enjoy mish-mash, chit-chat, clip-clop, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip-top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding dong, King Kong & ping pong.  Obviously, the “rule” is unwritten so may be better thought a convention such as the one which dictates why the words in “Little Red Riding Hood” appear in the familiar order; there the convention specifies that in English, adjectives run in the textual string: opinion; size; age; shape; colour; origin; material; purpose noun.  Thus there are “little green men” but no “green little men” and if “big bad wolf” is cited as a violation of the required “opinion (bad); size (big); noun (wolf)” wolf, that’s because the I-A-O convention prevails, something the BBC explains with a number of examples, concluding “Maybe the I, A, O sequence just sounds more pleasing to the ear.”, a significant factor in the evolution of much that is modern English (although that hardly accounts for the enduring affection some have for proscribing the split infinitive, something which really has no rational basis in English, ancient or modern.  All this is drawn from what is in structural linguistics called “Ablaut Reduplication” (the first vowel is almost always a high vowel and the reduplicated vowel is a low vowel) but, being English, “there are exceptions” so the pragmatic “more pleasing to the ear” may be helpful in general conversation.

Rolls-Royce, the Ford LTD and NVH

Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II, 1959.  Interestingly, the superseded Silver Cloud (1955-1958) might have been quieter still because the new, aluminium 6¼ litre (380 cubic inch) V8 didn’t match the smoothness & silence of the previous cast iron, 4.9 litre (300 cubic inch) straight-six, despite the V8 being remarkably heavy for something made substantially from "light metal".

The “tick-tocking” sound of a clock was for some years a feature of the advertising campaigns of the Rolls-Royce Motor Company, the hook being that: “At 60 mph (100 km/h) the loudest noise in a Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”.  Motoring journalists did verify the claim (at least in ideal conditions) but given electric clocks can be engineered silently to function, the conclusion was the company deliberately fitted time-pieces which emitted an untypically loud “tick-tock”, just to ensure the claims were true.  The Silver Clouds were, by the standards of the time, very quiet vehicles but in the US, Ford decided they could mass-produce something quieter still and at the fraction of the cost.  Thus the 1965 Ford LTD, a blinged-up Ford (the add-on "gingerbread" in pre-bling days known as "gorp") advertised as: “Quieter than a Rolls-Royce”.  Just to ensure this wasn’t dismissed as mere puffery, Ford had an independent acoustic engineering company conduct tests and gleefully published the results, confirming what the decibel (dB) meters recorded.  Sure enough, a 1965 Ford LTD was quieter than a 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III.  Notably, while Rolls-Royce offered only one mechanical configuration while the Ford was tested only when fitted with the mild-mannered 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) V8; had the procedure included another variation on the full-size line which used the 427 (7.0) V8, the results would have been different, the raucous 427 side oiler offering many charms but they extend to unobtrusiveness.  Not much noticed at the time was another intrusion.  Although the trend had been creeping through the industry for years, what the 1965 LTD did was make blatant Ford's incursion into the market territory once reserved for the corporate stablemate, Mercury, the "middle class" brand between Ford & Lincoln.  This would have consequences and become one of the reasons Mercury no longer exists.

1965 Ford LTD (technically a “Galaxie 500 LTD” because in the first season the LTD was a Galaxie option, not becoming a stand-alone model until the 1966 model year).

Ford justly deserves credit for what was achieved with the 1965 full-sized range because it wasn’t an exercise merely in adding sound insulation.  The previous models had a good reputation for handling and durability but couldn’t match the smoothness and ride of competitive Chevrolets so within Ford was created a department dedicated to what came to be called HVH (Noise, Vibration & Harshness) and this team cooperated in what would now be understood as a “multi-disciplinary” effort, working with body engineers and suspension designers to ensure all components worked in harmony to minimize NVH.  What emerged was a BoF (Body on Frame) platform (a surprise to some as the industry trend had been towards unitary construction) to ensure the stiffest possible structure but the combination of the frame’s rubber body-mounts, robust torque boxes and a new, more compliant, coil-spring rear suspension delivered what even the competition's engineers (though probably not the sales staff) acknowledged was the industry’s quietest, smoothest ride.  Ford didn’t mention the tick-tock of the clock.

Dual & Duel

Duel Pronounced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) A prearranged combat between two persons, fought with deadly weapons according to an accepted code of procedure, especially to settle a private quarrel.

(2) Any contest between two persons or entities.

1585–1595: From the earlier English form duell (a single combat (also "a judicial single combat”), from the late thirteenth century Medieval Latin duellum (combat between two persons), a poetical variant of the old Latin form of bellum (war) (related to bellicose), probably maintained and given the sense “duel” by folk etymology with the Latin duo (two).  The Old Latin word was retained in poetic and archaic language, the fancied Medieval connection with duo organically creating the linguistic semi-coincidence.  In pre-Modern English, the Italian form duello was also used.  By the 1610s, the English word had taken on the specialized sense of "premeditated and pre-arranged single combat involving deadly weapons in the presence of at least two witnesses", the general sense of "any contest between two parties" dating from the 1590s.  The related verbs are duels, dueling & dueled , dueler & duelist are nouns and duelistic an adjective.  The US spelling favors the double “l”.

A cased pair of engraved, gold & silver-accented Durs Egg flintlock dueling pistols.  The case contains a three-way combination flask, rod, mallet head, worm, oiler, and “46” marked ball mold.

Dating from the early nineteenth century, this brace of duelling pistols was from the London shop of Durs Egg (1748-1831) and features an uncommon 90^o grip angle, similar to that used on the heavier “saw-handle” pistols.  The smooth-bore Damascus barrels features gold blade front sights, case-hardened breech plugs with dovetailed notch rear sights, platinum vent liners & dual gold bands.  This pair belong to the class of dueling pistols known as “detented” which were once damned by the dueling class as “unfair weapons which no gentleman would hold” but, such were the advantages, by the late flintlock era the design was close to universal.  The “detent” refers to the mechanism in a flintlock (or later, percussion cap) pistol built into the lock or trigger system and its purpose was to ensure a smoother, more controlled trigger pull, something obviously critical in duelling where a fraction of an inch or second might have been the difference between life & death.  The detent was a small, spring-loaded catch or resistance point in the trigger system which provided a subtle “stop” (ie a resistance point) before the trigger fully releases the hammer, affording a duelist greater control and awareness of exactly when the gun would discharge, minimizing accidental firings or flinching.  In formal duels, both participants had to fire under controlled, fair circumstances so the classic arrangement was for a matched pair of duel pistols to be provided by the man who had issued the challenge with the choice of weapon granted to the respondent.

In the West, although very much a clandestine activity, the classic duel did survive into the twentieth century, mostly in aristocratic and military circles.  One institution which did attempt a codified revival was Nazi-era (1922-1945) SS.  The SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes; Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron” but translated variously as “protection squad”, “security section" etc) was formed (under different names) in 1923 as a Nazi party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs) and was later re-purposed as a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich the institution evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than two million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of “state within a state”.  The Waffen-SS (armed SS (ie equipped with military-grade weapons)) existed on a small scale as early as 1933 before Hitler’s agreement was secured to create a formation at divisional strength and growth was gradual even after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 and it was the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which triggered the Waffen-SS’s expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 900,000 men under arms.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS was widely implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The head of the SS was Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) and while rightly infamous for his many crimes, he’s of interest also for his weirdnesses.  One idea he introduced was the duel as a way of settling “matters of honor” (ie squabbles over this & that) between SS members and twisted though the conception may have been, “honor” was in the SS a core tenet, the organization's motto being Meine Ehre Heisst Treue (My Honor Is Loyalty).  As things turned out, Himmler didn’t quite live up to that ethos but by 1945 maybe he regarded loyalty as something like what John Howard (b 1939; prime minister of Australia 1996-2007) would have called a “non-core promise”.  A few SS duels were fought before Hitler, who regarded the practice as archaic and inefficient, ordered it stopped although the Führer did though see a place for the duel.  Calling priests “those black crows” and believing all Germans must learn it was "shameful to be a lawyer", ruefully he observed he’d be quite content to see duelling added to the rituals of both professions.

Hitler was of the school which believed the world would become a fine place "when the last lawyer was strangled with the guts of the last priest" (one of the variants of the phrase attributed to the French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784): "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.").  Diderot picked up his notion from Mémoire contre la religion (Memoir against religion, a work of over 600 pages written circa 1729 but uncovered only posthumously) which was the final testament of French Catholic priest Jean Meslier (1664–1729) who, it transpired, secretly was an atheist, an intellectual position believed to be held by a number of rationalist cardinals in the Roman curia although, being obviously a sensitive issue in a place like the Vatican, it'd be a challenge to do the research and get the numbers.  Meslier wrote: “Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre; Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois” (And his hands would weave the priest's entrails; For lack of a rope, to strangle kings), the most appealing fragment in that vein being: “Je souhaiterais que tous les grands de la terre et tous les nobles fussent pendus et étranglés avec les boyaux des prêtres” (I wish that all the great ones of the earth and all the nobles would be hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests).  Plenty of academics and revolutionaries have needed many more words (sometimes several volumes) to say much the same thing.  What the SS was allowed to retain was the “honourable” option of suicide for members in disgrace (ie found to be a bit of a homosexual), something of which George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936) would have approved.  Gay SS members who declined the generous offer were sent to a concentration camp where routinely they were processed with the traditional EWEF (Erschossen während eines Fluchtversuchs (shot while attempting to escape)) method.

In bizarre circumstances, Himmler almost was given the opportunity to prove his prowess as a duelist.  In 1938, knowing Hitler was unimpressed by the attitude of both Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946; minister of war 1933-1938) and Generaloberst (colonel-general, equivalent to general (four-star) in UK & US use) Werner von Fritsch (1880–1939; commander-in-chief of the German Army 1934-1938) towards his foreign policy and plans for war, in a series of internal machinations, Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) and Himmler engineered the removal of from the army of both.  Göring coveted the war ministry and Himmler was seeking to weaken the army in order to strengthen the role of his SS.  Blomberg mistake was to marry an attractive young woman with some history of prostitution (appalling Hitler whose lower-middle class views on morality never left him) while Fritsch was accused of being a homosexual on the basis of evidence which Himmler knew to be a concoction.  Prior to the marriage, Göring had been told of the bride’s past but, with Hitler, happily attended the wedding as a witness, knowing he had the tool with which to procure Blomberg’s demise while Fritsch was cleared by a military court of honor, the evidence so obviously fake the verdict quickly was delivered, delayed only by an adjournment necessitated by the German invasion of Poland which triggered World War II (1939-1945).

However, the accusation was enough to end his career and although rehabilitated, he wasn’t restored to office but, following the old Prussian code, Fritsch challenged Himmler to a duel with pistols.  Realizing a duel would make the unfortunate situation even worse for the army, the general to whom Fritsch gave the letter containing the challenge choose not to deliver it to Himmler so one of history’s more potentially significant duels was never fought.  Most analysts have assumed the result would not have been in doubt, Fritsch a fine shot and Himmler more used to pen & paper.  When, in January, 1945 Himmler’s ineptitude as a military commander was exposed by his brief command of an army group, Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945), with typical acerbity, noted in his diary: “The Reichsführer may be a fusspot but he’s no warlord.”  The greatest loss to history in the duel never being fought was that Goebbels never had the opportunity to leave a tart comment about Fritsch’s service to the world in ridding it of Himmler.  As a footnote, there has always been speculation that Fritsch may have been a bit of a homosexual, based both on his bachelorhood and Blomberg telling Hitler Fritsch “…was not a lady’s man”.  There is however no evidence to support this and the general’s correspondence reveals only a deep misogyny, felt apparently towards to whole species except his mother, something he had in common with the Führer although Hitler’s attitude was more a dismissive uninterest than hatred.

Dual (pronunced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) Of, relating to, or denoting two.

(2) Composed or consisting of two people, items, parts, etc., together; twofold; double; having a twofold, or double, character or nature.

(3) In the formal grammar of Old English, Old Russian, Arabic and Ancient Greek, denoting a form of a word indicating that exactly two referents are being referred to (a form in the dual, as the Old English git (you two), as opposed to ge (you) referring to three or more.

(4) In mathematics and formal s logic (of structures or expressions) having the property that the interchange of certain pairs of terms, and usually the distribution of negation, yields equivalent structures or expressions

1535–1545: From the Latin duālis (containing two, relating to a pair), the construct being du(o) (two) + -ālis (-al) The Latin duo was from the primitive Indo-European root dwo (two).  The General sense of "relating to two, expressing two, composed or consisting of two parts" is from 1650s.  The general sense of "division into two" has been in use since 1831.  The noun duality (two-fold nature, state of being two or divided in two) is a late fourteenth century form from the Late Latin dualitas.  The noun dualism dates from 1755 as a term in philosophy, the sense being "a way of thinking which explains phenomena by the assumption of two independent and absolute elements," from the French dualisme (1754).  The theological adoption to describe the doctrine of “two independent divine beings or eternal principles” was first noted in 1847.  Duel & dueling are nouns & verbs, dueler & duelist are nouns, dueled is a verb and dually is an adverb; the noun plural is duels (duelers & duelists now rare expet in historic contexts).  The adverb duely is an obsolete spelling of duly. 

Apparently, at the premiere of Disney’s The Parent Trap (1998), then CEO Michael Eisner (b 1942; chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Walt Disney Company, 1984-2005), believing the central parts in the film had been played by identical twins asked her “Where's your twin?”.  She told him she didn’t have one and that she should have been paid double.

Dualism in Philosophy

In Metaphysics, dualism holds there are two kinds of reality: the physical world (material) and the spiritual world (immaterial).  In the philosophy of mind, Dualism is the position that mind and body are in some categorical way separate and that mental processes and phenomena are, at least in some respects, non-physical.  Both positions are radically different from even nuanced flavors of monism (which, at its most pure, maintains there is but the universe and that any form of division of the whole is artificial and arbitrary) and pluralism suggests there are many kinds of substance and not just dualism’s two.  In the pre-enlightenment age, dualism had some appeal but it’s now of only historic interest except as a device to train the mind to explore speculative paths.

Dualism in Carburetion

1967 Shelby C7zx dual quad-aluminum intake manifold for Ford 427 FE.

From the late 1950s, Detroit’s V8s, with a sudden and increasing rapidity, grew bigger and more thirsty, the most rapacious of the engines out-pacing the capacity of the carburetors brought from outside suppliers, with the result the only solution was to use two or even three carburettors.  The manufacturer did eventually produce units with sufficient throughput but it took a while for supply to meet demand.  For street use, triple induction was for some time quite a good solution because the three-in-a-row layout lent itself to a good compromise, the engine most of the time being fed only by the central two-barrel carburetor, the outer two used only when the throttle was pushed wide open.  It meant engines with great available power were actually surprisingly economical most of the time although the delicate business of tuning could be a challenge, especially in conditions where there were notable variations in temperature or humidity.  For the high performance engines however, the best cost-performance equation (ignoring the fuel consumption which was the customer's problem) was dual induction, two four barrel carburettors, mounted either in-line or side-by side, the air-flow dynamics of the latter delivering the optimal top-end-power.

Short & Long-Ram Sonoramic dual quad intake manifolds.  The difference was that the short versions had 15 inch (380 mm) tuned intake runners while the long rams had their entire 30 inch (760 mm) length tuned.  

Most dramatic in appearance of all the dual quad setups were the Sonoramics, offered by Chrysler on a handful of models between 1959-1963.  Sonoramic was a linguistic novelty but the engineering principles of tuned resonance in thermal dynamics had been known for decades, the trick being to create a shape which essentially caused the fuel-air mixture to “bounce around”, emulating a low-boost “ram-air” effect.  There were two different versions which looked externally similar but differed internally, the rare so-called “short-ram” tuned for top-end power, the “long-ram” for the mid-range torque which was ideal for street use because the additional performance was delivered in the speed-ranges at which highway passing manoeuvres typically were undertaken.

Jaguar E-Type 4.2 with triple SUs (top) & with dual Strombergs (bottom).

From its introduction, the Jaguar E-Type (1961-1974 and in the US known also as XK-E or XKE) used triple SU HD.8 carburetors but in 1967, to conform to US emission control rules, models built for the North American market were switched to dual Zenith Stromberg 175 CD2SEs.  Unlike some manufacturers which applied the such changes globally, Jaguar maintain the triple assembly for sale in place with less rigorous rules which, at the time, was the rest of the world.  Ominously, power and torque dropped a bit, especially higher in the rev range, a prelude to the malaise which would affect so many in the 1970s.  The dual Zenith Stromberg were one element in a series of changes phased-in during 1967 and culminated in all of them appearing in the re-designated Series 2 (S2) E-Type, released as a 1968 model.  Again necessitated by US legislation, the most obvious modifications were (1) the carburetors, (2) the slight truncation of the cigar-shaped tail & the substitution of the elegant tail-lamps with rather more agricultural-looking units, (3) the use of safer, softer rocker switches on the dash instead of the stylish but sharp toggle switches and (4) the deletion of the lovely, fared-in head-lamp covers, the slightly elevated  replacements lending the car a not exactly bug-eyed look, but combined with the gaping "mouth", perhaps something which recalled a wide-eyed catfish scanning the waters.  There were a host of other changes, most of which made the Series II a better car but it was just a bit slower and didn't look as good.  The unofficial (but helpful and semi-codified) designation used to refer to the two distinct phases of the transitional Series 1 (S1) cars was 1.25 & 1.5, now an accepted part of the E-Type lexicon.

The lovely, pure lines of the S1 Jaguar E-Type (1961-1967, left).  It's not certain Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) really did say it was "the most beautiful car ever made" but he never denied it and was a fair judge of such things.  Visually, the S2 cars (1968-1971, right) were a little more cluttered although they were available with air-conditioning, something which for most owners was more important than the superior throttle response above 100 mph (160 km/h) delivered by the triple SUs.