Athwart

Athwart (pronounced uh-thwawrt)

(1) From side to side; crosswise, transversely.

(2) In admiralty use, at right angles to the fore-and-aft line; across.

(3) Perversely; awry; wrongly.

1425-1475: From the Late Middle English athwert & athirt and a proclitic form of preposition; the construct was a- (in the sense of "in the direction of, toward")  + thwart.  The a prefix was from the Old English an (on) which in Middle English meant “up, out, away”, both derived from the Proto-Germanic uz (out), from the primitive Indo-European uds (up, out); cognate with the Old Saxon ā which endures in Modern German as the prefix er.  Thwart was from the Middle English adverb & adjective thwert, (crosswise; (cooking) across the grain, transverse; counter, opposing; contrary, obstinate, stubborn), a borrowing from Old Norse þvert (across, transverse), originally the neuter form of þverr (transverse, across), from the Proto-Germanic þwerhaz, altered or influenced by þweraną (to turn) and þerh, from the primitive Indo-European twork & twerk (to twist).  Cognates include the Old English þweorh (transverse, perverse, angry, cross), the Danish tvær, the Gothic þwaírs (angry), the West Frisian dwers (beyond, across, to the other side of), the Dutch dwars (cross-grained, contrary), the Low German dwars (cross-grained, contrary) and the German quer (crosswise; cross).  The modern English queer is related.  Although still used by poets good and bad, the word is probably otherwise obsolete for all purposes except historic admiralty documents.  Athwart is a noun & adverb, athwartship is an adjective & adverb and athwartships & athwartwise are adverb; the noun plural is athwarts.  Forms like athwartly are definitely non standard.

In nautical design, the term “athwart” is used to describe a direction or orientation that is perpendicular to the centreline of a ship or boat (ie that which runs across the vessel from side to side (port-to-starboard) at right angles to the fore-and-aft line.  In shipbuilding this can apply to various components and actions on a ship, such as beams, futtocks, bulkheads, or even the positioning of objects; as a general principle something can be said to be “athwart” if it sits perpendicular to the centreline but the term is most often applied to objects which span or crosses the vessel’s entire width.  In naval architecture specifically, athwart was used as a noun to refer to the cross-members which sat beneath the deck-mounted gun-turrets on warships.  Although they had long been a part of the supporting structures, the term “athwart” seems first to have been used on the blueprints of HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906 and a design thought so revolutionary it lent its name to the class of the biggest battleships, previous such vessels immediately re-classified as “pre-dreadnoughts” and, when even bigger ships were launched, they were dubbed “super-dreadnoughts”.

Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Roinson, athwart, TV Guide's sixth annual Emmy after party, The Kress, September 2008, Hollywood, California.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Kubla Khan (1798)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Sack

Sack (pronounced sak)

(1) A large bag of strong, coarsely woven material, as for grain, potatoes, or coal.

(2) The amount a sack holds; also called sackful the amount contained in a sack, sometimes used as a unit of measurement.

(3) A bag, usually large.

(4) In slang, dismissal or discharge from employment.

(5) In slang, the bed, often as “in the sack”.

(6) In fashion, a loose-fitting dress, as a gown with a Watteau back, especially one fashionable from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century (also spelled sacque); formerly, a loose-fitting hip-length jacket, cloak or cape.

(7) A loose-fitting coat, jacket, or cape.

(8) In the slang of baseball, a base.

(9) In the slang of agriculture in South Midland, US, the udder of a cow.

(10) In the slang of American Football, to tackle the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage before the player is able to throw a pass.

(11) In fashion, as sack-line, a loose-fitting, vaguely tubular, enveloping style of dresses and coats which emerged first in 1957.

(12) To pillage or loot after capture; to plunder.

(13) A strong, light-colored wine, traditionally imported from Spain and the Canary Islands.

(14) In cricket, a run scored off a ball not struck by the batsman: allotted to the team as an extra (on sundry) and not to the individual batsman; now usually called a bye (archaic).

(15) In vulgar slang, usually as ball-sack (although there are imaginative variations): the scrotum.

(16) In fashion, as sack coat; a kind of coat worn by men, and extending from top to bottom without a cross seam.

A dated form of sac (pouch in a plant or animal).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English noun sak, sake & sakke (bag, sackcloth), from the Old English sacc (sack, bag) & sæcc (sackcloth, sacking), both from the Proto-West Germanic sakku, from the late Proto-Germanic sakkuz (sack), from the Latin saccus (bag, sack, sackcloth), from the Ancient Greek σάκκος (sákkos) bag made from goat hair, sieve, burlap, large cloak (as for a wedding dress), from the Semitic;  In the Hebrew and Phoenician, a śaq was a “cloth made of hair, bag, mourning dress”.  The use to describe the pillage of a city or other settlement after conquest dates from 1540–1550; from Middle French phrase mettre à sac (to put to pillage, literally “to put (loot) in a sack”), sac in this sense from the Italian sacco (looting, loot), a shortened form of saccomano, from the Middle High German sakman (pillager).  As applies to alcohol, Sack was first recorded in 1525–1535, from the French (vin) sec (dry (wine)), from the Latin siccus (dry).  It was cognate with the Dutch zak, the German Sack, the Swedish säck, the Danish sæk, the Hebrew שַׂק‎ (śaq) (sack, sackcloth), the Aramaic סַקָּא‎, the Classical Syriac ܣܩܐ‎, (Ge'ez) ሠቅ (śäḳ), the Akkadian saqqu and the Egyptian sꜣgꜣ. A doublet of sac.  It was a long time ago and, records being scant, some etymologists suggest the word was originally Egyptian, a nominal derivative of sꜣq (to gather or put together) that also yielded the sok (sackcloth) and the Greek borrowing came via a Semitic intermediary.  Others reject this, noting that such an originally Egyptian word would be expected to yield the Hebrew סַק rather than שַׂק‎ and instead argue the Coptic and Greek words are both borrowed from the Semitic, with the Coptic word perhaps developing via Egyptian sꜣgꜣ.  The Japanese is the descendent is theサック (sakku) and historically, sack was an alternative spelling of sac (sacrifice).  Sack, sacking & sackage are nouns and verbs, sacker is a noun, sacked is a verb & adjective, sackful is a noun & adjective and sackable & sack-like are adjectives; the noun plural is sacks.  The adjectives sackesque & sackish have been used by critics of fashion but both are non-standard while the noun sackability is used purely for comic effect.  

Lindsay Lohan adopted the sack-line early and from time-to-time returns to the look.

Historically, the capacity of a sack has been defined in law.  Although long archaic and subject to (sometimes regional) variations depending on commodity, the old English measure of weight, usually of wool, was equal to 13 stone (182 lb), or 26 stone (364 lb).  The term survives in the Woolsack, on which sits the presiding officer of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK’s parliament (formerly the Lord Chancellor, now the Lord Speaker).  Because there’s never been a universally accept definition for sack (size, shape, construction or capacity), what some call a sack others will call a bag, pack, pouch carryall, portmanteau, satchel, tote etc or the constructs haversack, knapsack, rucksack.  The only (loosely applied) conventions of use appear to be that bags etc tend to be smaller and sacks larger and made from more coarse material.  Folklore said to be medieval held that it was a bag if, when filled with potatoes, it could be carried by a woman but, it if demanded the strength of a man, it was a sack; story is likely apocryphal.  The synonyms for the plundering of cities include pillage, loot & ransack.  The idiomatic uses of sack number at least in the dozens.

Sack dresses by Hubert de Givenchy, Spring Summer 1958 collection, Paris 1957.

Givenchy’s sack-line debuted in their spring-summer line on 1957's catwalks, Balenciaga showing a not dissimilar style just a few weeks later.  Both were essentially an evolution of the “Shirt Dress” which had attracted some attention the previous season and signaled a shift from the fitted, structured silhouettes which had been the signature motif of the decade.  The sack-line dresses were described by some critics as “shapeless” or “formless”, presumably because they lacked any suggestion of the waistline which had existed for so long as fashion’s pivot-point.  However, the forms the sack-line took would have been recognizable to anyone familiar with fluid dynamics or the behavior of air in wind tunnels, a waistless dress which narrowed severely towards the hem one of the optimal aerodynamic shapes.  That was presumably a coincidence but Givenchy’s press-kits at the 1957 shows did claim that “More than a fashion, it’s actually a way of dressing” and one which must have found favor with at least some women, not unhappy at being able to ditch the forbidding and restrictive, high-waisted girdles needed to achieve the wasp-wasted “New Look” which Dior had introduced to a post-war world anxious to escape wartime austerity.

Sack dress # 164 by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Spring Summer 1958 collection, Paris 1957.

Balenciaga’s sack dress was in 1957 probably more exaggerated than Givenchy’s; loose and enveloping, it brought to fashion an unprecedented gap between body and garment, emphasizing how radical a shift it was the long tradition of using idealized version of the female form as the basis for the tailored shape, designers making great efforts in their cuts to emulate aspects of human movement in the behavior of fabrics.  The sack-line disconnected the two, women now feeling an moving within, rather than with the dress; it was really quite subversive to suggest clothes might be designed for the comfort of women rather than the gaze of men.  Gone were the darts, belts and bands which had so carefully be crafted to be suggestive of that idealized shape, the woman’s body now and abstract entity which, within its enveloping cocoon could be a very different that that seen usually on the catwalks.  Within the fashion industry, the enthusiasm with which the sack-line was received was restrained but cultural critics, then less numerous but perhaps more erudite than today, were intrigued, modernity welcomed in a field which had never embraced the avant-garde in the way of art, literature and architecture, the link to functionalism especially noted.  It has aged well and been influential although it would begat a less stylish variation on the theme, the dreaded "tent dress".

Marilyn Monroe in burlap sack dress, 1951.

The sack-line which appeared on the haute couture runways in 1957 wasn’t an entirely new style, a loose-fitting dress, often as a gown with a Watteau back had been fashionable from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century (when it was also spelled as both sack & sacque) and even before that the terms had been applied to a a loose-fitting hip-length jacket, cloak or cape and later there was the sack coat; a kind of coat worn by men, the cut extending from top to bottom without a cross seam.  There was however a more recent take, Twentieth Century Fox’s PR operation in 1951 taking advantage of a bitchy comment from a Hollywood columnist (plus ça change) to issue a series of promotional photographs of Marilyn Monroe wearing a literal “sack dress”.  There are a number of versions of the tale but the one most often told is that Ms Monroe, then twenty-four and wearing a revealing red dress, prompting one gossip columnist to snipe that she looked “cheap and vulgar” and would have been better advised to wear “a potato sack.”  Twentieth Century Fox put her in one.

That may or may not be true and it could be the publicity people just wanted some imaginative images, the sex-kitten’s soft curves and the utilitarian angularity of a potato sack quite a juxtaposition and if the intention was to prove she was so beautiful she could make even a potato sack look good, the point was well made.  The photographs were used in Stare magazine, several months before Playboy would be launched with her on the cover and Stare included an interview in which she’s alleged to have said she didn’t care for potatoes because they tend to “put on weight” but it must have been a more tolerant age because there’s no record of her being attracting the opprobrium directed by sections of the vegetable industry at President George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president 1989-1993) after he declared he didn’t like broccoli and it was banned from Air Force One.  Stare noted Ms Monroe had a better political antennae than the president, for whatever her dietary strictures, “…she decided to do something for the potatoes!”

It was during the depression years of the 1930s that flour companies in the US became aware women were turning their cotton flour sacks into clothing, cloths and more.  Money was scarce and seeing the possibility of increasing sales at what would be a marginal cost, one manufacturer began to package their product in sacks decorated with attractive patterns.  Now such a move would be thought part of the “circular economy” but during the Great Depression, it was something that became popular because of economic necessity, “repair, reuse, make do, and don't throw anything away” a widely-spread motto of the time.  Other manufacturers soon followed and professional designers were sometimes used to provide more appealing patterns.

Fashion as economic imperative.

The idea of recycling cotton sacks actually pre-dated the years of the Great Depression; although better documented, the events of the 1930s were not unique and in the cyclical nature of economies, down-turns, recessions and depressions appear with some frequency.  Sack clothing, common in the nineteenth century, was still an important component in rural domestic economies in both Canada and the US during the 1920s but it was the effects of the Great Depression which saw the practice spread to the most deprived of the urban population and the most commonly used sacks were those of a convenient size, typically the cotton items in which flour and sugar were sold.  The slang in those years for the recycled clothing was “feedsack,” or “chicken linen”.

The practice declined in the early 1940s as the economy improved but continued during the war years because there were shortages of cotton and much of what was available was devoted to military needs and decorative fabric for dress-making was sometimes unobtainable.  As prosperity overtook the land in the 1950s, the use of sacks to make clothing faded and by 1953, many manufacturers had switched from cotton to much cheaper paper sacks.

Disappear

Disappear (pronounced dis-uh-peer)

(1) To cease to be seen; vanish from sight.

(2) To cease to exist or be known; gradually or suddenly to end.

(3) Of a person, to vanish under suspicious circumstances.

(4) Secretly to kidnap or arrest and then imprison or kill someone without due process of law; used especially to describe the practice in South and Central American republics but the practice is widespread.

1520–1530: The construct was dis- + appear.  The early form was disaperen and earlier still was disparish, from the French disparaiss, stem of disparaître.  The dis prefix is from the Middle English did-, borrowed from Old French des from the Latin dis, ultimately from the primitive Indo-European dwís.  In Modern English, the rules applying to the dis prefix vary and when attached to a verbal root, prefixes often change the first vowel (whether initial or preceded by a consonant/consonant cluster) of that verb. These phonological changes took place in Latin and usually do not apply to words created (as in Modern Latin) from Latin components since the language was classified as “dead”.  The combination of prefix and following vowel did not always yield the same change and these changes in vowels are not necessarily particular to being prefixed with dis (ie other prefixes sometimes cause the same vowel change (con; ex)).  Appear is from the late thirteenth century Middle English apperen & aperen, from the twelfth century Old French aparoir & aperer (appear, come to light, come forth (in Modern French apparoir & apparaître)), from the Latin appāreō (I appear), the construct being ad- (to) + pāreō (I come forth, I become visible), from the Latin apparere (to appear, come in sight, make an appearance), the construct being ad- "to" + parere (to come forth, be visible; submit, obey), probably from the primitive Indo-European pehzs- (watch, see), the simple present tense of pehz- (protect).  The figurative sense of "getting away" appeared only in 1913, the meaning "seem, have a certain appearance" having been in use since the fourteenth century.  The use to describe the secret disposal of political opponents is late twentieth century although technique had long been practiced, presumably even pre-dating modern civilization.  The spelling appeare is obsolete.  There are many synonyms including vanish, depart, wane, retire, escape, go, melt, dissipate, fade, perish, evaporate, expire, sink, flee, retreat, fly, die, recede, leave, withdraw and abandon.  The use of the synonyms is dictated by the process of departure.  Fade suggest something where disappearance has been gradual whereas vanish implies something sudden, often with a hint of something suspicious or mysterious.

Disappear is an intransitive verb.  The phrase “they disappeared him” appeared in Joseph Heller’s (1923-1999) 1961 novel Catch 22, as a darkly humorous reference to the way the military would dispose of those whose continuing existence they found inconvenient; an example of extrajudicial execution, unofficially state-sanctioned murder without any formal process.  In English, “to disappear someone", although an unnatural construction, has by usage become correct because it’s accepted as a mock euphemism.  To be “disappeared” didn’t of necessity mean murdered.  The missing could have been imprisoned or internally exiled but, because they disappeared without a trace, there was no way of knowing and the worst tended often to be assumed.  Some regimes seemed also to understand the uncertainty could be an advantage such as the way in the Soviet Union it wasn’t unknown for those sent to the Gulag remaining there sometimes for months before it was confirmed either they were imprisoned or even dead.  Historically the practice is most associated with the military dictatorships in Central & South America between the during the 1970s and 1990s, most infamously the so-called Guerra sucia (Dirty War) conducted by the military junta which ran Argentina between 1976-1983, a period marked by a kind of state terrorism although, in an interesting example of a private-public partnership, it acted also as the state-sponsor of the activates of a number of far-right papa-military groups.  During the junta’s rule, as many as 25,000 were killed or disappeared.

Despite the practice of political opponents being “disappeared” being for decades widespread, it wasn’t until the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the treaty which created the International Criminal Court that technically it entered international law as a crime and, at least in some circumstances, one with a wide vista.  Under the terms of the statute, if committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population, a "forced disappearance" is classified as a crime against humanity and is thus not subject to a statute of limitations.  In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

Before & after, Love Is in the Bin (ex Girl with Balloon (2006)) (2018) by Banksy.

Disappearance can be integrated into art.  A playful (or exploitative, depending on one’s view) take on the idea was the transmogrification of Girl with Balloon by the artist Banksy into Love Is in the Bin.

In what was described by the auction house Sotheby's as an “art intervention by the artist”, what was claimed to be a remote-controlled and “unexpected” self-destruction took place during the auction at which the work was offered.  Immediately upon the drop of the gavel (at a then record of just over Stg£1m (circa US$1.4m)), a shredder built into the frame was triggered, intended (it was said by the artist) entirely to shred the work.  However, the device malfunctioned and stopped with its work (conveniently) exactly half-done; what was planned to disappear, instead became half-transformed, half remaining.  It was either part of the plan or something serendipitous but anyway Sotheby’s claimed this was the first piece of art created mid-auction and the stunt had the desired effect, Love Is in the Bin in October 2021 realizing at auction Stg£18.5m (US$25.1m).  But that wasn’t a work disappearing.  Even if fully-shredded, it would have been but a transformation, the residue in the bin becoming part of the art and, within the construct of pop-art, that’s exactly right.  Whether the fully-shredded installation would have brought more at auction will never be known.

In March 2016, Lindsay Lohan posted on Instagram (an apparently photoshopped photograph) with her head covered by a brown paper-bag on which was written "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE", reprising the effort a couple of years earlier by another Hollywood celebrity with a troubled past who said it was to convey the message he was disappearing from public life.  Despite initial speculation, it was apparently never Lindsay Lohan's intension to disappear from anything except the tabloids, her message being she was no longer an  enfant terrible.  The barcode (upper right) was not of significance. 

The act of disappearance has however been used, the not entirely original but most pure interpretation of which was the ephemeral art movement of the Cold War years which went beyond the idea of gradual degradation many artists had explored and used instead a technique of almost instant destruction.  The proponents of auto-destructive art claimed their work was political, a reaction to the devastation of two world wars and the threat of nuclear conflagration.

Sonoramic

Sonoramic (pronounced sonn-o-ram-ick)

A form of enhanced induction for internal combustion engines; sometimes called cross-ram or long-ram induction.  The form SonoRamic was also used.

1959:  A compound word constructed by engineers (apparently with no contribution from the marketing department), the construct being the Latin sonō (make a noise, sound) + the English ram + -ic.  Sonō was from the primitive Indo-European swenhe (to sound, resound) which was cognate with the Sanskrit स्वनति (svanati) (to sound, resound).  The more productive Latin derivative was Latin sonus (sound, a noise) from the primitive Indo-European swon-o, again from the root swenhe.  Ram was from the Old English ramm (in the sense of "battering ram", from the Old High German ram, thought probably related to the Old Norse rammr (strong) and the Old Church Slavonic ramenu (impetuous, violent).  The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The engineers were influenced in their coining of sonoramic by the debut three years earlier of the sonogram (thereby creating sonogramic), a form of diagnostic imaging used in medicine.  Sonoramic is a noun; the noun plural is Sonoramics.  There are no standard derived forms but there are owners who might have coined the informal adverb sonoramically to describe the way their machine does its stuff.

Fluid dynamics and resonant conditions

1960 Chrysler 300F with long-ram Sonoramic 413 cid (6.8 litre) wedge V8.

All else being equal, increasing the volume of the fuel-air mixture (energy input) flowing through an internal combustion engine (ICE) increases power and torque (energy output).  One way to increase the throughput is to use an external device such as a supercharger or turbocharger but it can be achieved also by creating resonance in the induction system, this done by designing a passage which uses the physics of fluid dynamics to increase pressure in specific spaces.  Obviously uninvolved in the engineering, Chrysler’s marketing people claimed in 1960 the Sonoramic was new technology but for many years the principle had been used in racing engines, the mathematical equations determining acoustics & resonance having been published by German physicist and physician Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821–1894) in a scientific paper published in 1863.  Indeed, the concept had before been used on road cars but always in a discrete manner; what Chrysler did in 1959 with their elongated tubular "ram-runners" was make a dramatic fashion statement in designer colors.

Representation of fluid dynamics under specific resonant conditions.

Essentially, the Sonoramic is an implementation of Sir Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) first law of motion, more commonly known as the law of inertia: “An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion” and it’s the second part which Sonoramic exploited.  During the intake cycle of an engine, the fuel-air mix flows through the intake manifold, past the intake valve, and into the cylinder, then the intake valve shuts.  At that point, the law of inertia comes into play: Because the air was in motion, it wants to stay in motion but can’t because the valve is shut so it piles up against the valve with something of a concertina effect.  With one piece of air piling up on the next, the air becomes compressed and, being under pressure, this stuff has to go somewhere so it turns around and flows back through the intake manifold in the form of a pressure wave.  This pressure wave bounces back and forth in the runner and if it arrives back at the intake valve when the valve opens, it’s drawn into the engine.  This bouncing pressure wave of air and the proper arrival time at the intake valve creates a low-pressure form of supercharging but for this to be achieved all variables have to be aligned so the pressure wave arrives at the intake valve at the right time.  This combination of synchronized events is known as the "resonant conditions".

Long (lower) and short-tube (upper) Sonoramic intake manifolds.

Most of the Sonoramics produced were "long-tubes" with a tuned internal-length of 30 inches (760mm), generating prodigious quantities of mid-range torque, optimized for overtaking under highway conditions.  These characteristics were ideal for road cars but also built were a small number of the so-called "short-tube" Sonoramics, a somewhat misleading term because both shared the same external dimensions.  The critical difference was the short-tube units had only a 15 inch (380mm) length of the internal passages resonance-tuned and this, at the expense of mid-range torque, produced much more power high in the rev-range making them more suitable for competition.  Used by Chrysler to set a number of speed records, these were the most charismatic of the breed and a handful were built with manual gearboxes.  At auction, in November 2010, the sole 1960 Chrysler 300F short-tube Sonoramic convertible with the Pont-a-Mousson 4-speed gearbox, sold for US$437,250.

Sonoramic in silver, one of the "long tube" versions tuned for mid-range torque.

The first four generations of Chrysler's 300 letter series had used increasingly larger versions of the Hemi V8 and the 1958 300D with a 392 cubic inch (6.4 litre) version even was (briefly and abortively) offered the novelty of a very expensive fuel-injection system.  The Hemi, heavy and expensive to produce, was in 1959’s 300E replaced by the larger capacity, wedge-head 413 (6.7) which matched it for power but lacked the mystique, something substantially restored in 1960 when the 300F debuted with the sexy Sonoramic.  Ram Induction today is common, although contemporary designs, integrated with fuel-injection systems, are not as photogenic as the original Sonoramics.  As well as raw aluminium, the tubes were available in the designer colors of the time, red, gold and blue and opinion is divided about which look is the coolest but, impressionistically, red ones seem to be the most photographed.  That is likely a function of the red having been produced in the greatest volume (followed by the silver) while the gold (used on the expensive Chrysler 300s) was comparatively rare.  The blue units seem never to have been fitted to standard production cars and because the look can be re-created with high-temperature paint, collectors suspect there are now more blue tubes than were ever produced by the factory.

1958 Chevrolet Corvette “Fuelie” with fuel-injected 283 cubic inch (4.6 litre) V8.  The Rochester mechanical fuel injection worked better than the Sonoramic but didn’t look as good.  In 1958 the fuel-injected Corvette was Corvette was available with 250 (Code 579) or 290 (Code 579D) horsepower (HP), the more powerful almost twice as popular, selling 1007 compared with 504.

Engineers and other real nerds tend to use terms like “short ram” & “long ram” for the induction system but because of the attraction of the word, most today seem to prefer “Sonoramic”.  Within the corporation, Dodge used “D-500 Ram Induction” and Plymouth called it “SonoRamic Commando” but when installed on the letter-series Chrysler 300s, both “Ram Induction” & “Ram Injection” appeared, the latter apparently exclusive to print advertising (which at the time tended to be more in magazines (not necessarily specialist automotive publications), the agency’s tactic to engage in a bit of what would later be called “ambush marketing” by piggy-backing on the image created by General Motors’ successful promotion of the mechanical “fuel-injection” system their Rochester division was producing for Chevrolet and Pontiac.  These days, such an approach might be labelled “deceptive and misleading conduct” but if folk in the early 1960s weren’t more forgiving, they were less litigious.

1958 Plymouth advertising.

The Sonoramic's plumbing couldn’t match what fuel-injection achieved but as the acceleration tests and high-speed runs confirmed, it did what it said on the tin and was considerably cheaper than the intricate mechanical mechanism.  However, there were drawbacks to the simplicity because unlike most of Detroit’s other implementations of dual four-barrel carburettor (“dual-quad” to the nerds) the Sonoramics ran permanently with all eight throats feeding the engine, each unit attached to the opposite bank of cylinders.  On systems where the carburettors were more closely placed (in-line or side-by-side), the usual practice was to use just one except when needed, the same principle as the “demand superchargers” used during the inter-war years by Mercedes-Benz in which the blower was engaged only when the upper gears were in use and the throttle was pushed wide open, high in the rev-range.  What that meant was the dual quad cars delivered fuel economy which was “poor” rather than the “atrocious” delivered by the Sonoramics but both appealed to a demographic which accepted that for everything one does there’s a price to be paid and gas (petrol) then was cheap although not quite as cheap and its expression in pre-inflation dollars & cents make it appear to twenty-first century eyes.

Sonoramic in red, one of the rare "short tube" versions tuned for top-end power.

Anyway, when filling up, owners of Sonoramics had the consolation of being able to open the hood and gaze lovingly at their sensuous tubes, a construction visually more accomplished than Rochester’s business-like hardware.   Unfortunately the affection didn’t always extend to the behaviour when starting a Sonoramic on a winter morning, the combined 120 inches (3 metres) of cold aluminum far from ideal at maintaining the fuel-air mix in the required aerosol.  Until the metal was warm, fuel was prone to condensing, creating what was soon known as the dreaded “puddling effect” and in colder places some owners improvised “heated inlet manifolds”, the most simple approach being a pair of incandescent light bulbs rigged above the tubes for 30 minutes prior to starting, one instance where the inherent inefficiency of the old technology (where much energy was lost as heat rather than light) proved useful.  Others gave up and had the system exchanged for a prosaic single four-barrel carburetor, an echo of Chrysler’s miserable experience in 1958 when 35 cars were built with Bendix “Electrojector” fuel injection.  Unfortunately, the on-board analogue computer (which which had performed reliably in testing) proved fragile in real-world conditions (shades of MG's experience with the MGA Twin-Cam) and all but one of the cars was returned to dealerships in response to a corporate recall to be converted to the standard dual-quad apparatus.  It would be decades before advances in solid-state technology made electronic fuel-injection a viable mass-market product.

One of the Sonoramic’s relations: 1993 Mercedes-Benz 600 SEC (C140).   

Despite the impression probably gained by the few souls who now trouble themselves to see what lies under a hood (bonnet), long-tube induction is common but now usually concealed beneath enveloping plastic moldings (sometimes fashioned from real or fake carbon fibre as the price tag rises).  The manufacturers have sound reasons for doing that but the expanse of flat, black plastic is an uninspiring sight compared with things like the 6.0 litre (365 cubic inch) Mercedes-Benz V12 (M120).  The C140 & W140 were among the last of the old-style Mercedes-Benz of admirable engineering & build quality but even in some of them the troublesome tentacles of new concerns intruded, manifested by sometimes fragile electronics and wiring with coatings which biodegraded prematurely.  In 1993, because of model proliferation, the factory changed the naming convention so in that year there were some "one off" badges including the early V12 R129 roadsters appearing as "600 SL" (later to be SL 600) and the sequence of the C140 was especially unusual in that it was the last of the “SECs” and the first of the “CLs”, its mid-life spent as an “S”, the confusing alpha-numeric trajectory of the C140 600 being:

1992 600 SEC (Not sold in North America)

1993 600 SEC (Global)

1994-1995 S 600 (Global)

1996-1997 S 600 (North America) & CL 600 (RoW (rest of the world))

1998 CL 600 (Global)

1999 CL 600 (North America only)

Republic P-47 Thunderbolt test-bed with XI-2200 V16 (1945).

Chrysler’s interest in ram tuning was an out-growth of the desire to exploit the findings of research undertaken during the war developing very high-performance piston engines for fighter aircraft.  This had culminated in the XI-2220, a 2,220 cubic inch (36.4 litre) V16 aero-engine which, rated at 2450 HP, was tested in a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt (1947-1945), an appropriate platform given the P-47 was then the biggest, heaviest single-engined fighter ever to enter service (among piston-engined aircraft, it still is).  Although the indications were that close to 4000 HP was achievable (at least for short durations under the EWR (emergency war rating protocol), with the advent of the jet engine the days of the big piston-engined fighters were nearly done so the V16 project was cancelled, a fate suffered also by the other outstanding big aero-engine of that last generation: the Napier-Sabre H24.

XI-2220, V16 aircraft engine (1944-1945).

The lessons learned however would be applied on the ground instead of in the skies because although big capacity piston engines had mostly been rendered obsolete for fighter aircraft, a few generations of some a bit smaller were about to start roaming American roads.  The cars and their engines would be like nothing before seen in mass-produced, affordable cars, Chrysler adopting for their new 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) V8 in 1951 the V16’s hemispherical combustion chambers, a feature it would use for most of that decade and the next and such was the aura of the name it’s used still, even if things inside are now a bit less hemispherical.

Chrysler A-311 V8 experimental engine.

The new Hemi V8 had obvious performance potential and the engineers experimented with the tuned-length induction system used on the V16 before the aero-engine's final supercharger/turbocharger combination was adopted.  So successful was the ram-tuned V8 (named A-311) attempts were made to contest the 1952 Indianapolis 500 but the race’s sanctioning body understood the implications the remarkable new powerplant would have on their carefully-curated ecosystem of owners and sponsors so declared it didn’t comply with the rules (even tweaking them a bit to ensure it never would).

The Ramcharger Club’s 1949 Plymouth Business Coupe with “ram-charging” intake manifold (a concept soon to be marketed as “SonoRamic”) and “eight-into-eight megaphone exhaust” apparatus, circa 1958.

The research however continued and, although it’s not clear to what extent their efforts received factory-support, in the late 1950s some of Chrysler's young engineers formed the drag racing-focused Ramchargers Club using, somewhat improbably, a 1949 Plymouth business coupe fitted with a particularly extravagant implementation of the technology, a surrealistically tall intake manifold, a device built for dynamometer testing and never intended for a moving vehicle.  They dubbed the Plymouth "High & Mighty".  Bizarre it may have looked but the cartoon-like Plymouth achieved results which vindicated the approach and a less obtrusive version of the system was made available on certain Plymouths, Dodges and Chryslers, the highest evolution of Sonoramic offered on the 300 letter series cars until 1964.

Lindsay Lohan enjoying the effects of fluid dynamics.

Not content with applying the science of fluid dynamics only to the induction system, the Ramchargers used it also for the exhaust headers.  Rather than additional power, the commendably juvenile quest was for noise, the exaggerated, trumpet-like tubes using the megaphone principle which increases volume by raising acoustic impedance.  The desired result was achieved and although there's no record of anyone with a decibel-meter taking a reading, the old Plymouth was said to be spectacularly loud; megaphone exhausts subsequently were banned.    

Chrysler Slant Six with Hyper Pak.

Chrysler didn’t restrict the ram induction idea to the big-block V8s, using it also on the short-lived (1960-1962) Hyper Pak performance option for the both 170 cubic inch (2.8 litre, 1959-1969) and 225 cubic inch (3.7 litre, 1987-2000) versions of their Slant Six, the engineers taking advantage of the space afforded by the angled block to permit the curvaceous intake runners nearly to fill the engine bay.  The Hyper Pak wasn't seen in showrooms but was available as an over-the-counter kit (literally a cardboard box containing all necessary parts) from Dodge & Plymouth spare parts departments and its life was limited because it became a victim of its own success.  Although less suitable for street use because it turned the mild-mannered straight-six into something at its best at full throttle, in the race events for which it was eligible it proved unbeatable, dominating the competition for two years, compelling the sanctioning body cancel the series.  Success isn't always rewarded.

Although it was the longer lived 225 version which gained the Slant Six its stellar reputation for durability and the ease with which additional power could be extracted, there's always been a following for the short-stroke 170 because of its European-like willingness to rev, the characteristics of the over-square engine (unique among the slant-six's three displacements (170-198-225)) unusually lively for a US straight-six.  Despite some aspects of the specification being modest (there were only four main bearings although they were the beefy units used in the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8), for much of its life it used a tough, forged steel crankshaft and high-speed tolerant solid valve lifters, features which made a robust engine.  Despite that, after the Hyper Pak affair, Chrysler showed little interest in any performance potential, knowing the US preference for V8s, something which doomed also Pontiac's short-lived single overhead camshaft (SOHC) straight-six (1966-1969).  A version of the 225 with a two-barrel carburetor (rated at 160 horsepower, an increase of 15 over the standard unit) was offered in some non-North American markets where V8 sales were not dominant and it proved very popular in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Central & South America but only when tighter US emission regulations forced its adoption did a 225 with a two barrel carburetor appear in the home market, installed to restore power losses rather than seek gains.