Fluoroscope

Fluoroscope (pronounced floor-uh-skohp, flawr-uh-skohp or flohr-uh-skoph)

(1) In laboratory physics, a device used to measure the fluorescence of a solution (now rare).

(2) In medicine (and later commerce), a radiologic instrument (originally built as a tube or box) equipped with a fluorescent screen on which opaque internal structures can be viewed as moving shadow images formed by the differential transmission of x-rays through the body.

1896: A word coined in US English to describe a newly introduced device, the construct being fluoro- + -scope and adapted from the German Fluorescop.  Fluro- was from the Italian fluoro, from the Latin fluor (flow).  Scope was from the Italian scopo (purpose), from the Latin scopus (target), from the Ancient Greek σκοπός (skopós) & σκοπέω (skopéō) (examine, inspect, look to or into, consider), from σκέπτομαι (sképtomai), from the primitive Indo-European speḱ-.  Etymologically, the word is related to both skeptic and spectrum.  Fluoroscope & fluoroscopy are nouns, fluoroscopically is an adverb and fluoroscopic is an adjective; the noun plural is fluoroscopes.

The shoe-fitting fluoroscope

From the podological safety of the twenty-first century, the idea that part of the shoe-buying process once involved having one’s feet blasted with radiation probably seems strange but for decades they were a fixture in shoe-shops.  The idea has a certain compelling logic because under x-rays, the bones and flesh of the feet were clearly visible as was the outline of the shoe, all guesswork about the fit thus removed, customers able to choose a perfect pair.

Shoe-fitting fluoroscope, circa 1940.

The design of the fluoroscope also had great appeal as a sales device because unlike many of the uses of the technology in clinical medicine, the ones in shoe shops were designed so the images could be seen by the customer.  Indeed, they featured three viewing ports so simultaneously the x-rayed foot could be seen by the owner, the sales staff and one other which the manufacturers said was to allow a parent and a child to share the experience.  Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were made with an upward-facing x-ray tube which sat inside the bottom of a metal housing, the images fed to a fluorescent screen at the top, viewable through the three ports.  At foot level was an aperture which opened into a space between x-ray tube fluoroscopic screen and it was in this space the foot rested.  When triggered, the x-rays penetrated both shoe and foot, the fluorescent screen lighting up with the image.

The original specifications of the machines included lead-shielding as well as a section in the manual explaining the importance of these protective fittings but, shoe shops being commercial spaces where displays are often moved (and over the years, renovations effected), it was subsequently found it wasn’t unusual for the heavy shields to be removed so the machines were easier to maneuver into another place.  Additionally, shop staff soon noted that the less shielding fitted, the higher the quality of the image.  That obviously conferred some commercial advantage but also meant that with every scan (and daily there could be dozens), bursts of radiation were scattered in all directions bathing the bodies of customers, staff and innocent bystanders.  In perfect order, maintained according to the manufacturer’s recommendations, the specified 20-second scan delivered around half the dose of radiation of a typical CT (computed tomography) chest scan but not being in a clinical environment where they received regular servicing from qualified technicians, many of the machines in shoe shops were poorly maintained and some subsequently were found to be delivering potentially hazardous doses, registering several hundred times above the permissible limit.  Worse, some shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were positioned next to a wall so those in the shop next door were also irradiated and, to attract those passing the shop, some scans were even conducted with the machine in the store’s front window, radiation blasting all walking past.  For the individual customer who received anyway the highest dose, there was also a multiplier effect because women in particular rarely try just the one pair and could therefore be subject to many dangerous blasts.  Statistically though, most at risk were the staff who, given the machines had been in use since the 1920s, might have been exposed to the risk for decades, papers in the medical literature first documenting the issue in the mid-1950s, the case notes mentioning that not only did one patient report operating the fluoroscope as many as twenty times as day but also the common practice among staff to give their own feet a demonstrative scan just to assure sceptical children the process was painless.

Lindsay Lohan in stiletto heels an an image of how an x-ray of her foot might appear.

It was German mechanical engineer and physicist Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923) who in 1895 produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range which could “see through” material including human flesh.  He found the phenomenon so strange and the rays weird beyond immediate comprehension so named them “x-rays”, the implications of his discovery immediately understood and in 1901 it gained him the inaugural Nobel Prize in Physics.  Still, neither Herr Doktor Röntgen nor any other scientist probably pondered x-rays as something useful in shoe shops and that they ended up there was something serendipitous.  The tale of the migration is contested but the most accepted (and certainly the one supported by patent applications and registrations) is that of a World War I (1914-1918) doctor who adapted an x-ray machine so that the feet of soldiers with foot wounds could be scaned without them having to remove their boots, something which rendered the triage process much more efficient.  After the war, he modified the device to suit the shoe-buying process, demonstrating one at a Boston retailer convention in 1920, eventually being granted a US patent.  The UK authorities about the same time issued a patent for a similar device (where it was called the Pedoscope) and with mass-production lowering the unit cost, by the late 1920s they had proliferated on both sides of the Atlantic.  Although the take-up rate slowed during the depressed decade of the 1920s, sales accelerated in the consumerist culture of the post-war years and by the late 1950s, there were reputedly over ten-thousand in North America, three thousand in the UK and close to a thousand spread between Australia & New Zealand.

Remarkably, although it had been known since the 1920s that x-rays could be harmful, the research was fragmentary and the data insufficient to quantify the risk.  Consumer protection and concerns about public health were nothing like those of today and it was only in 1946, after the aftermath of the A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) provided graphic examples of the effects of exposure to radiation in high-doses that the American Standards Association (ASA) issued guidelines for the manufacture of shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, setting an upper limit on the amount of radiation the devices can emit.  Shortly afterwards, shoe shops were required to place warning signs on the machines cautioning customers to have no more than twelve scans a year, an early example of a nation-wide edict at at time when most public-health measures were usually administered by state and local governments.  The concerns remained and in 1948, a survey of the fluoroscopes operating in Detroit revealed most were emitting hazardous doses of radiation, something confirmed by wider tests and the first warnings were issued in 1950 although remarkably, the last wouldn’t be withdrawn from service until the 1970s.

Agitprop

Agitprop (pronounced aj-it-prop)

(1) A form of propaganda, emanating originally from the USSR but later more generally applied.

(2) A (usually disparaging) term for an agency or department of government or corporation which directs or coordinates publicity, advertising or other activities which may be classed as propaganda.

(3) A person (technically an agitpropist) who is trained or takes part in such activities.

(4) Of or relating to agitprop; an instance of such propaganda.

1920s: From the Russian агитпро́п (agitprop), from отде́л агитации и пропаганды (otdél agitacii i propagandy) (Department for Agitation and Propaganda), the construct in English being agit(ation) + prop(agenda), the Russian agitatsiya a borrowing from the French agitation while propaganda was gained from the German which picked it up from the Roman Catholic Church, the ecclesiastical Latin from the New Latin propāganda which was thought to be the ablative feminine gerundive of the Classical Latin prōpāgō (propagate).  The Congregātiō dē Prōpāgandā Fidē (the official title sacra congregatio christiano nomini propagando (the sacred congregation for propagating the faith)), was a committee of cardinals created in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV (1554–1623; pope 1621-1623) to supervise foreign missions.  The original Agitation Propaganda Section of the USSR’s Central Committee of the Communist Party in the USSR appeared in contemporary documents variously as Agitpróp, Agitatsiónno-propagandístskiĭ otdél, Agitpropbrigáda and Agitpropbyuro, reflecting the frequent bureaucratic and administrative changes in the early days of the Soviet state.  Agitprop is a noun and a verb and agitpropist is a noun; the noun plural is agitprops.  Variations (agitpropesque, agitproplike et al) have been used as non-standard adjectives and although no one seems to have concocted an adverb, dictionaries note the present participle agitpropping (used as a noun & adjective) and the past participle agitpropped.  The alternative spelling is agit-prop.

Agitprop began in the Soviet Union but was co-developed to its definitive forms under fascism, a political system much concerned with spectacle.

Agitprop is political propaganda disseminated through art, drama, literature etc and is historically associated with communist regimes, its origins in the material disseminated by the Department for Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  Like the less overtly atheistic Nazis, the Bolsheviks learned much from the techniques the Roman Catholic Church had developed over the centuries and even Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) who habitually referred to priests as “those black crows” never tried to hide his grudging admiration for an institution which had endured and prospered for two thousand-odd years.

The Church’s sacra congregatio christiano nomini propagando (the sacred congregation for propagating the faith), established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV (1554–1623; pope 1621-1623) was a propaganda operation created to manage communications with the new countries then recently discovered and also to supervise the new system of government by congregations adopted during the Counter-Reformation.   For the Church, of interest was both the re-conquest of severed lands and the evangelization of the vast populations in regions then becoming known through the expeditions of European explorers, not all of whom were Catholic.  The theological cold war of the age was the contest between the doctrines of Rome and those of the dreaded Protestantism.

In the 1920s, the Red Army used both trains and trucks as mobile agitprop units, the trains often equipped with printing presses which enabled the graphic artists to create regionalized variations of the material.

Although the results achieved by the sacred congregation ebbed and flowed with because it was so dependent on the energy and priorities of the members of the committee, it succeeded as a propaganda project and many of the territories in Africa, Asia and South America (as well as some re-claiming of souls in Europe) which remain today predominately Roman Catholic are due to the efforts which began in the seventeenth century.  The objectives of the early Bolsheviks was strikingly similar in that their task of evangelization was one of spreading to all the gospel of communism so that the Marxist prediction of a world-wide revolution might be realized.  To the techniques borrowed from the Church the Russians added the novelties now so associated with agitprop, the colors and practices of graphic art which were mapped on to the stark simple imagery known in religious iconography and stained glass windows.  The method remained the same: a simple message, endlessly repeated and presented in a form which changed just enough to keep the viewers interested, the need for text kept to a minimum so it was suitable for the illiterate likely to be among the most receptive audiences.  Innovative too was the idea of agitprop as a moving thing, trains and trucks loaded with material to be distributed far and wide.

So distinctive is the classic agitprop poster that it remains in use as a political message implying dictatorship.  Inevitably, it’s popular also with meme-makers.

Agitprop was thus overt political propaganda, understood as such by some and to others just another form of religion, temptingly offering something tangible in this life rather than paradise in the next.  Designed to produce political consequences, it spawned a number of forks, the best known of which were those distributed through popular media such as theatre, cinema and pamphlets and although agitprop literature did exist, agitprop was so inherently visual that even in those few –laces where radio existed, impact was limited.  Soon after the October Revolution of 1917, an agitprop train toured the country, broadcasting propaganda and staging plays.  On board was a printing press which reproduced posters to be thrown from the windows as it passed through even the tiniest villages.  The Soviet’s train inspired agitprop theatre, a politicized left-wing theatre formed in 1920s Europe which soon spread to the rest of the western world.  An international and briefly influential theatre movement, it’s most associated with the work of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), Joan Littlewood (1914-2002) and a myriad of groups such as Red Ladder and 7:84 which emerged during the mid-twentieth century.  Despite this, agitprop is essentially a footnote in theatre history, probably because its historical moment passed, its techniques and styles becoming absorbed into mainstream, bourgeois theatre.  In its early form a didactic form of mass-propaganda, the word agitprop had, by the 1950s, come to mean a kind of highly politicized art although, having become just another mass-produced commodity, classical, two-dimensional agitprop imagery exists now in something of an ironic space.

Lindsay Lohan agitprop.

Kestrel

Kestrel (pronounced kes-truhl)

(1) In ornithological taxonomy, a common small falcon (especially the Falco tinnunculus), of northern parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, notable for hovering in the air with its head to the wind, its primary diet the small mammals it plucks from the ground.

(2) Any of a number of related small falcons.

(3) A brand-name, used severally (initial upper case).

1400–1450: From the late Middle English castrell, from the Middle English castrel & staniel (bird of prey), from the Middle French cresserelle & quercerelle (bird of prey), a variant of the Old French crecerelle, from cressele (rattle; wooden reel), from the unattested Vulgar Latin crepicella & crepitacillum, a diminutive of crepitāculum (noisy bell; rattle), from the Classical Latin crepitāre (to crackle, to rattle), from crepāre (to rustle). The connection with the Latin is undocumented and based on the folk belief their noise frightened away other hawks.  However, some etymologists contest the connection with the Latin forms and suggest a more likely source is a krek- or krak- (to crack, rattle, creak, emit a bird cry), from the Middle Dutch crāken (to creak, crack), from the Old Dutch krakōn (to crack, creak, emit a cry), from the Proto-West Germanic krakōn, from the Proto-Germanic krakōną (to emit a cry, shout), from the primitive Indo-European gerg- (to shout).  It was cognate with the Old High German krahhōn (to make a sound, crash), the Old English cracian (to resound) and the French craquer (to emit a repeated cry, used of birds).  All however concur the un-etymological -t- probably developed in French.  Kestrel is a noun; the noun plural is kestrels.

In taxonomy, the variations include the American kestrel (Falco sparverius), the banded kestrel (Falco zoniventris), the common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), the greater kestrel (Falco rupicoloides), the grey kestrel (Falco ardosiaceus), the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), the nankeen kestrel (Falco cenchroides), the Seychelles kestrel (Falco araeus) and the spotted kestrel (Falco moluccensis).  Although the bird had earlier been described as the castrell, in the early seventeenth century the small falcons were more commonly known as windhovers, the construct being wind + hover, reflecting the observations of the ability of the birds literally to hover when facing into the wind.  A now more memorable term however was the one dating from the 1590s: The windfucker (or the fuckwind).  In English, for almost two centuries, any use of the F-word could be controversial and its very existence seemed to make uncomfortable one faction of lexicographers who at one point managed to strike it from almost all dictionaries of English.  They were also revisionists of historical interpretation and claimed windfucker & fuckwind were errors in transcription, the original folk-names being windsucker & suckwind.  To give theis theory a bit of academic gloss, they assembled charts of regionally specific pronunciation in the Late Middle and early Modern English to illustrate the extent to which the archaic long S character ( ſ ) often took the place of an < s > at both the beginnings and middle of words, the argument being the long S was misread as a lowercase ( f ).

It was an intellectually clever way to attempt to remove vulgarity from English but etymologists today give little credence to the theory, noting that the undisputed French sources provide no support.  It may be assumed kestrels came to be called windfuckers & fuckwinds because when displaying their expertise at hovering in the air when facing into the wind, the movements of their bodies does make it look as if airborne copulation is in progress.  Of note too is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the same disapprobation didn’t always attach to “fuck” which, although there was a long history of meaning “fornication”, it had also been in figurative use to describe anything from “plough furrows in a field” to “chop down a tree”.  Fuck was from the Middle English fukken and probably of Germanic origin, from either the Old English fuccian or the Old Norse fukka, both from the Proto-Germanic fukkōną, from the primitive Indo-European pewǵ- (to strike, punch, stab).  It was probably the popularity of use as well as the related career as a general-purpose vulgar intensifier which attracted such disapproval.  By 1795 it had been banished from all but the most disreputable dictionaries, not to re-appear until the more permissive 1960s.

Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, Gran Sasso d'Italia massif, Italy, during the mission to rescue Mussolini from captivity, 12 September 1943.  The Duce is sitting in the passenger compartment.

Windfucker thus became archaic but not wholly extinct because it appears in at least one British World War II (1939-1945) diary entry which invoked the folk-name for the bird to describe the German liaison & communications aircraft, the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (stork), famous for its outstanding short take-off & landing (STOL) performance and low stalling speed of 30 mph (50 km/h) which enabled it almost to hover when faced into a headwind.  The Storch’s ability to land in the length of a cricket pitch (22 yards (20.12 m)) made it a useful platform for all sorts of operations, the most famous of which was the daring landing on a mountain-top in northern Italy to rescue the deposed Duce (Benito Mussolini, 1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943).  So short was the length of the strip of grass available for take-off that even for a Storch it was touch & go (especially with the Duce’s not inconsiderable weight added) but with inches to spare, the little plane safely delivered its cargo.

Riley was one of the storied names of the British motor industry, beginning as a manufacturer of bicycles in 1896, an after some early experiments as early as 1899, sold its first range of cars in 1905.  Success followed but so did troubles and by 1938, the company had been absorbed into the Nuffield organization.  Production continued but in the post-war years, Riley joined Austin, Morris, Wolseley and MG as part of the British Motor Corporation (BMC) conglomerate and the unique features of the brand began to disappear, the descent to the era of “badge engineering” soon complete.  The last Rileys were the Elf (a tarted-up Mini with a longer boot which was ascetically somehow wrong) and the Kestrel (a tarted-up Austin 1300), neither of which survived the great cull when BMC was absorbed by the doomed British Leyland, marque shuttered in 1969, never to return.  The rights to the Riley brand name are now held by BMW which has never even hinted there may be a revival, their unhappy (and costly) experience with Rover presumably a cautionary tale still told in Bavaria. 

Pre-war Riley Kestrels: 1938 1½ litre four-light Kestrel Sports Saloon (left), 1939 2½ litre Kestrel fixed head coupé (with post-war coachwork) (centre) and 1937 1½ litre 12/4 Kestrel Sprite Special Sports (right).

It was a shame because the pre-war cars in particular had been stylish and innovative, noted for an unusual form of valve activation which used twin camshafts mounted high in the block (thus not “overhead camshafts (OHC)”) which provided the advantages of short pushrods & optimized valve placement offered by the OHC arrangements without the weight and complexity.  Also of interest were their pre-selector transmissions, a kind of semi-automatic gearbox.  Among the most admired had been the 1½ & 2½ litre Kestrels (1934-1940), most of which wore built with saloon coachwork in four or six-light configurations although there were also fixed head (FHC) and drop head coupés (DHC) as well as a few special, lightweight roadsters.

The Kestrel Beer Company's "Flying Kestrel", built by Webster Race Engineering.

Of late, one 1935 Riley Kestrel has enjoyed an unusual afterlife.  In 2020, Scotland’s Kestrel Beer Company commissioned the UK’s Webster Race Engineering to create from one something to use as a land speed record (LSR) contender.  Dubbed “Flying Kestrel”, it’s powered by a turbocharged 2.5 litre (151 cubic inch) Audi TSI inline-five attached to an Audi A6 manual transmission, the power delivered to a Ford 9-inch differential, for decades a mainstay of drag-racing and anywhere else big power and torque needs to be handled.  After setting seven records during a 2021 campaign, the Flying Kestrel returned to Webster for fine-tuning including a new exhaust manifold, turbocharger blanket, and nitrous system for boost and cooling, a key gaol to reduce engine-bay heat.  On the dynamometer, the inline-five registered 991 horsepower (739 Kw) & 753 foot-pounds of torque (1022 Nm) and thus configured an attempt will be made on 17 June 2024 to achieve 200 (322 km/h).  LSR vehicles with much less power have often exceeded 200 mph but typically they have used bodywork with aerodynamic properties more obviously suited for the purpose.  It’s not clear if Webster’s Riley has been subject to much wind-tunnel testing but it may be assumed the shape is far from ideal as an LSR competitor and for some runs it has been fitted with rear fender skirts (spats), a trick in use since the 1920s.

Flying Kestrel with rear spats fitted during 2021 campaign.  Note the holes in the fenders which were added, not as a weight-saving measure (a la the frame of the Mercedes-Benz SSKL (1929-1932)) but to reduce lift at speed, the fenders tending otherwise to act as "parachutes".  The same technique was used by Zora Arkus-Duntov when trying to counter the alarming tendency of the front end of the Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport (GS, 1962-1964) to "take off" as it approached 150 mph (240 km/h).  For reasons unrelated to aerodynamics, the GS programme proved abortive and of the planned run of 100-125 for homologation purposes, only five were built, all of which survived to become multi-million dollar collectables.      

The spats are one of the rare instances where adding weight increases speed, attested by the tests conducted during the 1930s by Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union, both factories using spats front and rear on their LSR vehicles, extending the use to road cars although later Mercedes-Benz would admit the 10% improvement claimed for the 1937 540K Autobahn-kurier (highway cruiser) was just “a calculation” and it’s suspected even this was more guesswork than math.  Later, Jaguar’s evaluation of the ideal configuration to use when testing the 1949 XK120 (1948-1954) on Belgium roads revealed the rear spats added about 3-4 mph to top speed though they precluded the use of the lighter wire wheels and did increase the tendency of the brakes to overheat in severe use so, like many things in engineering, it was a trade-off.  More significantly perhaps, when travelling at speeds around 200 mph, “lift” is an issue and one which has afflicted many cars which have adhered well to the road at lower speeds.  Succinctly, the problem was in a 1971 interview explained by the General Motors’ (GM) engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov (1909-1996) who described the 1962-1967 (C2) Chevrolet Corvette as having “just enough lift to be a bad airplane.”  At speed, it’s another trade-off: the desire to lower aerodynamic drag versus the need for sufficient downforce for the tyres to remain sufficiently in contact with the earth’s surface for a driver to retain control, those few square inches of rubber the difference between life & death, especially at around 200 mph.  It’s hoped the “Flying Kestrel” proves a "windfucker" and lives up to the name figuratively, but not literally.

1935 Riley 1½ litre Kestrel (Chassis 22T 1238, Engine SL 4168) with custom coachwork (2004)

The intriguing mechanical specifications and the robust chassis has made the pre-war cars attractive candidates for re-bodying as an alternative to restoration.  Not all approve of such things (the originality police are humorless puritans as uncompromising as any Ayatollah) but some outstanding coachwork has been fashioned, almost always the result of converting a saloon or limousine to a coupé, convertible or roadster.  The 1935 1½ litre Kestrel above began life as a four-door saloon which was converted to a DHC during 2004 and the lines have been much-admired, recalling (obviously at a smaller scale) some of the special-bodied Mercedes-Benz SS (1928-1933), the more ostentatious of the larger Buccialis (1928-1933) and the Bugatti Royale (1927-1933).

A kestrel windfucking.

Envelope

Envelope (pronounced on-vuh-lohp or en-vee-lope (non-U))

(1) A flat paper container, usually having a gummed flap or other means of closure and used to enclose small, flat items (especially letters) for mailing. 

(2) Something that envelops; a wrapper, integument, or surrounding cover.

(3) In biology, a surrounding or enclosing structure, as a corolla or an outer membrane.

(4) In geometry, a mathematical curve, surface, or higher-dimensional object that is the tangent to a given family of lines, curves, surfaces, or higher-dimensional objects.

(5) In the radio transmissions of a modulated carrier wave, a curve connecting the peaks of a graph of the instantaneous value of the electric or magnetic component of the carrier wave as a function of time.

(6) The fabric structure enclosing the gasbag of an aerostat or the gasbag itself.

(7) As an idiom, in pushing the envelope, to stretch established limits, as in technological advance or social innovation.

(8) In music, the shape of a sound which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler.

(9) In computing, the information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents, the best known example of which is the blind carbon-copy (bcc) in eMail.

(10) In astronomy, the nebulous covering of the head or nucleus of a comet; a coma.

(11) In civil engineering, an earthwork in the form of a single parapet or a small rampart, sometimes raised in the ditch and sometimes beyond it.

(12) In engineering and design, the set of limitations within which a technological system can perform safely and effectively.

(13) In aviation (of dirigibles), a bag containing the lifting gas of a balloon or airship; fabric that encloses the gas-bags of an airship.

(14) In electronics, a curve that bounds another curve or set of curves, as the modulation envelope of an amplitude-modulated carrier wave in electronics.

(15) In computing, the information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents.

(6) In music, the shape of a sound, which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler. 

1705: From the Middle French and Old French envoluper, the construct being en- (from the Old French en-, from the Latin in-, a prefixation of in (in, into)) +‎ voluper (to wrap, wrap up).  In Italian, the derivation was viluppare, from the Old Italian alternate goluppare (to wrap) from the Vulgar Latin vlopp (to rap).  The Proto-Germanic wrappaną and wlappaną (to wrap, roll up, turn, wind) came from the primitive werb (to turn, bend), akin to the Middle English wlappen (to wrap, fold) and ultimately the Modern English lap (to wrap, involve, fold).  The modern wrap is derived from the Middle English wrappen (to wrap), the dialectal Danish vravle (to wind, twist), the Middle Low German wrempen (to wrinkle, distort) and the Old English wearp (warp).  The French enveloppe, is a derivative back-formation of envelopper (to envelop).  Envelope is a noun; the noun plural is envelopes.

Pushing the envelope

The phrase pushing the envelope is from the lingo of test pilots, whose job is among the most dangerous of their profession.  It entered general usage following the publication of the late Tom Wolfe’s (1930-2018) book about test pilots and the early US space program, The Right Stuff (1979).  The envelope in the phrase is a mathematical construct, what is called the "flight envelope" of a given aircraft: combinations of speed, altitude, range and stress that are considered the limits of an airframe’s capabilities and so-named because usually it's graphically represented in the shape of the familiar DL envelope.  Within the envelope formed by these parameters, the airframe is structurally sound; beyond those limits, perhaps not and that’s what test pilots do, verify the safety of the aircraft within those limits and pinpoint possible points of failure if the envelope is pushed too far.  Although big, fast computers now make the parameters of the envelope more predictable and the job of the test pilot less dangerous, structural failures during test flights continue to happen.

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

Few airframes have operated within such a tight envelope as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, introduced into service in 1956 as a single-engine, supersonic interceptor, built for the United States Air Force (USAF) but used by many nations.  Best thought of as the manned missile by which it was referred to by many, it had a radical wing design, a very small, straight, mid-mounted trapezoidal.   After the German research undertaken during World War II (1939-1945) became available, most jet fighters had used either swept or delta-wings, a compromise between speed, lift, maneuverability and internal space for fuel and equipment.  Lockheed sophisticated wind-tunnels and primitive computers however determined the optimal shape for high-speed supersonic flight was small, straight and trapezoidal.  An extraordinary achievement of manufacture as well as design, the wing was so thin and sharp it was a cut-hazard for ground crews and protective guards were fitted during maintenance.

The F-104 was the first combat aircraft capable of sustained Mach 2 flight, its speed and climb performance impressive even by today’s standards.  However, there was a price to be paid, take-off, stall and landing speeds were high as was the turn radius, combat pilots referring to low-speed turns as “banking with intent to turn".

The flight envelope, note the DL envelope shape.

The safety record was infamously bad.  Of the 916 delivered to the West-German (FRG) Air Force, 262 crashed, gaining it the nickname witwenmacher (widow maker) and some of those grieving widows sued Lockheed, receiving judgment in their favor.  In USAF service, the write-off rate was 30.63 accidents per 100,000 flight hours.  By comparison, the rate for the Convair F-102 Dagger was 14.2 and for the North American F-100 Sabre, 16.25.  The F-104's two nicknames, "manned missile" and "widow maker" may be thought of as cause and effect.

Personalised Lindsay Lohan Celebrity Birthday Card on premium quality satin cardstock @ Stg£3.95 (including envelope).

Debunk

Debunk (pronounced dih-buhngk)

(1) To expose or excoriate (a claim, assertion, sentiment, etc.) as being pretentious, false, or exaggerated.

(2) To disparage, ridicule, lampoon.

1920–1925: An invention of US English, the construct being de- + bunk.  The de- prefix was from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from (the Old English æf- was a similar prefix)).  It imparted the sense of (1) reversal, undoing, removing, (2) intensification and (3) from, off.  Like dis-, the de- prefix was used to form a complex verb with the sense of undoing the action of a simple one and the handy device has been most productive, English gaining such useful words as demob, degauss and, of course, the dreaded deconstruct & the lamentable decaffeinate.  It’s obviously valuable but the more fastidious guardians of English were of course moved to caution it shouldn’t be used because one was too indolent to find the existing antonym although it was conceded that some coinings were necessary to convey some special sense such as “decontaminate”, needed in those situations when something like “cleanse” is inadequate.  Bunk in this context was etymologically un-related to other forms of “bunk” and was a and was a clipping of bunkum (pronounced buhng-kuhm) which meant (1) insincere speechmaking by a politician intended merely to please local constituents and (2) insincere talk; claptrap; humbug.  Debunk is (a transitive) verb and debunker is a noun.

Although the exact date in unclear, during sittings of the sixteenth United States Congress (1819-1821), a long, torturous debate ensued on the difficult matter of the Missouri Compromise, something which would later return to haunt the nation.  Well into discussions, Felix Walker (1753–1828; representative (Democratic-Republican (sic)) for North Carolina 1817-1823), rose and began what was apparently, even by the standards of the House of Representatives, a long, dull and irrelevant speech which, after quite some time, induced such boredom that many members walked from the chamber and other attempted to end his delivery by moving that the question be put.  Noting the reaction, Representative Walker felt compelled to explain, telling his colleagues “I’m talking for Buncombe”, referring to his constituents in Buncombe County.  Delivered phonetically, the phrase entered the political lexicon as “talking to (or for) Bunkum” and this was soon clipped to “bunk” meaning “speech of empty thoughts expressed with inflated or pretentious language”.  Later, the sense of bunk was extended to mean “anything wrong or worthless”.

Bunk in the sense of “wrong, worthless” probably gained its popularity from the phrase “history is bunk”, attributed to Henry Ford (1863–1947), famous for being founder of the Ford Motor Company and infamous for some of his more odious opinions.  His words first appeared in print in an interview, publishing in 1916, the context being his opposition to US involvement in the war in Europe:

"History is more or less bunk.  It is tradition.  We don’t want tradition.  We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.  That’s the trouble with the world.  We’re living in books and history and tradition.  We want to get away from that and take care of today.  We’ve done too much looking back.  What we want to do and do it quick is to make just history right now."

Quite what Mr Ford meant has been much discussed over the years and the man himself did latter discuss it, although there are inconsistencies in his explanations.  Historians have concluded he was expressing scepticism at the value of history as it is taught in schools and other educational institutions; his feeling being there was too much emphasis on kings & emperors, wars & empires, politics & philosophy and entirely too little on the lives of ordinary people who, in a sense, actually “made the history”.  Ironically, given his critique of what’s known as the “great man” school of history, he is regarded as one of the great men whenever histories are written of the early automobile and the development of assembly-line mass-production.

The verb “debunk” actually emerged from a work of what would now be called popular revisionist history.  In 1923, novelist William Woodward (1874-1950) published the best-selling Bunk, the blurb suggesting his purpose being to “take the bunk out of things” and debunk was soon adopted by academic historians who in the 1920s made something of an industry in writing books and papers debunking the myths and puff-pieces the propaganda of World War I (1914-1918) produced in abundance.  An obviously useful word, it was soon in vogue throughout North America and quickly made its way across the Atlantic and to the rest of the English-speaking world.  Pedants in England, rarely happy with anything new, of course objected to a short punchy word intruding where they might use a paragraph but debunk made itself at home and never left.

A more recent coining was "prebunk", used as both noun and verb.  The act of prebunking involves issuing warnings about disinformation or misinformation before dissemination and once done, the fake news is said to have been prebunked (in political warfare it's a pre-emptive strike and thus differs from something like an injunction which is preventive).  Very much a word of the era of Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013), "prebunk" seems not to have been used until 2017, sometime after a spokesperson for the Trump administration formalized the concept of "alternative facts".  "Alternative facts" was not something new and had been part of the language of government probably as long as there have been governments but the Trump White House was the first blatantly to admit use.  Mothers with young children are familiar with "alternative facts" such as "Santa Claus" or "the tooth fairy" and the idea worked so well under Trump it became a core part of the Biden administration's media management although, if coming from Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) himself, it can be hard to tell where "alternative facts" end and senility begins.

Servergate, the scandal about crooked Hillary Clinton's home-brew mail server was as much about the cover-up which was her attempt to debunk the facts as it was about her initial wrongdoings.  For cartoonists, crooked Hillary was the gift which kept giving.   

Conspiracy theories have probably been around as long as human societies have existed but as means of communications have expanded, their spread has both extended and accelerated, social media just the latest and most effective vector of transmission.  Debunking conspiracy theories is also a thing although in this, there’s doubtlessly an element of preaching to the converted, the already convinced dismissing the debunkers as part of the conspiracy.  However, debunking can in itself be something of a conspiracy such as the wholly unconvincing stories concocted to try to explain away the curious business surrounding crooked Hillary Clinton’s home-brew mail server.  Trying to dismiss concerns about that as the stuff of conspiracy theorists was less a debunking than a cover-up.

Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap (1998).

A more conventional debunking was published by Nicki Swift who detailed the truly bizarre conspiracy theories about Lindsay Lohan’s “twin sister”.  It began after the release of the 1998 film The Parent Trap in which twins Hallie Parker and Annie James meet at summer camp after being separated at birth and, having been re-united, the pair embark upon a series of adventures in an attempt to bring back together their divorced parents.  Lindsay Lohan played both parts including many scenes in which the twins appeared together and while there had been advances in technology since Hayley Mills (b 1946) undertook the role in the 1961 original, the film was thought an impressive achievement in editing and stage direction, the body-double being Erin Mackey (b 1986, about a fortnight before Lindsay Lohan).

The conspiracy theory is that Lindsay Lohan didn’t play both parts and that she actually had a co-star: her twin sister Kelsey Lohan, variations of the explanation for the now absent spouse including that she was murdered immediately prior to the film’s debut while others say she was killed in 2001 after a mysterious (and well-concealed) disappearance.  BuzzFeed included an entry about this in one of their pieces about celebrity conspiracies, documenting the story of how after Kelsey died in a car accident (which, given her “sister’s” driving habits when young, was at least plausible) the Disney corporation “covered their tracks” by saying Lindsay portrayed the twins, her family corroborating this due to their obsession with celebrity.  Whether there was an intention to suggest Disney was in some was involved in the “death” wasn’t made clear but the wording certainly hints at the implication.

Mandii Vee, for whom the truth is out there.

The idea of the Walt Disney Company as somehow evil has been around for decades and was the undercurrent in the helpful video posted on Mandii Vee’s YouTube channel, her explanation for the scandal being that Kelsey "mysteriously died" prior to the film's release and that put Disney in a predicament because they didn't want to release a movie starring a now dead girl.  Such things have been done before and sometimes with notable commercial success but according to Mandii Vee, Disney thought it would bring “bad juju” (a noun or adjective meaning “something cursed or haunted by a dark aura”).  Disney’s solution was said to be a high-finance version of comrade Stalin’s (1878-1953) “un-personing” or the techniques of erasure George Orwell (1903-1950) detailed in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), paying Lindsay Lohan's parents millions in hush money to keep the secret, never speaking of the unfortunate Kelsey again and denying she ever existed.  At that point, Disney would have pulped and re-printed all the film’s promotional collateral, re-shot the credits and publicized the story that Lindsay Lohan played both roles.  Finding the idea one actor could do both at the same time improbable, Mandii Vee delved a bit into physics and pondered whether such things were technically even possible.

1958 Edsel Citation convertible.

Debunking one possibly mythical part of the Edsel tale.  The name “Edsel” has become a byword for commercial failure, based on the sad story of the Edsel car, a brand introduced in 1958 by the Ford Motor Company and so poorly received that the whole Edsel division was shuttered within three years.  The Edsel is said to have failed because:

(1) It was just another variation of the existing large cars sold by the corporation under the Ford and Mercury brands while the increasing public appetite was for smaller, imported models (and within a few years Ford’s own and smaller Falcon, Fairlane & Mustang).

(2) It was introduced into a market where automobile sales were in decline because of the brief but sharp recession of 1958, the mid-price sector where sat the Edsel especially affected.

(3) It had for more than two years been over-hyped as something genuinely innovative whereas it was little different from a 1958 Ford or Mercury.

(4) The build quality was patchy, as was the factory’s support for dealers.

(5) The styling was judged unattractive, especially the large, gaping grill, the vertical orientation of which was out of step with the trend towards the horizontal.  Some also found in the grill some resemblance to female genitalia which was thought variously disturbing or amusing but certainly not attractive.

1959 Edsel Corsair four-door hardtop.

The failure is a matter of record but one figure that has often puzzled analysts is that Ford booked a loss of over U$250 million on the programme at a time when a million dollars was still a lot of money and, depending on how the conversion is done, that would in 2022 dollars equate to between 2-3 billion.  The extent of the loss would be understandable if the Edsel had been as genuinely new as claimed but it’s difficult to see where all the money went given that all the expensive components were borrowed from the existing Ford and Mercury line up:

(1) The engines, although some were of a unique displacement, were just variations of the existing corporate line-up used in Ford, Mercury & Lincoln models (the Mileage-maker six and the Y-Block, FE (Ford-Edsel) & MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln) V8s).

(2) The platform, transmissions and suspensions were shared with Ford & Mercury, the wheelbase the only difference.

(3) No dedicated factories were built for the Edsel, the cars assembled on the same assembly lines used by Ford and Mercury.

So the costs involved in the development were relatively less expensive endeavors such as body panels and interior trim.  The marketing expenses were presumably high and there were costs associated with the dealer network but the suspicion has long been that the infamous quarter-billion dollar loss was Ford taking advantage of accounting rules, perhaps booking against the Edsel most of the development costs of things like the FE engine, something which would remain in production until 1976.  That the Edsel was a big failure is disputed by nobody but financially, the losses may have been both over-stated and to some extent transferred to the taxpayer.

Quadrat

Quadrat (pronounced kwod-ruht)

(1) In ecology, an area of vegetation (sometimes as small as one square metre), marked out for study of flora and fauna in the surrounding area; the frame used to mark out such an area.

(2) In printing, a blank, low-cast type used by typographers to fill in larger spaces in printed lines.

(3) In civil engineering, a type of surveying instrument (obsolete since the sixteenth century).

(4) In Egyptology, a virtual rectangular subdivision of a line or column of hieroglyphs within which a group of hieroglyphs is arranged.

1675-1685: From the late Middle English quadrate, from the French quadrat (literally "a square") from the Latin quadratrus, past participle of quadrare (to make square) and related to quadrus (a square), quattuor (four); the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European kwetwer- (four).  The earlier use in English (certainly as quadrate but there are indications the spelling quadrat was also used although this may be a later error in transcription) dates from circa 1400 and described a type of surveying instrument.  Quadrat is a noun; quadratic is an adjective and quadrically is an (irregular) adverb; the noun plural is quadrats.   

For pedants only

English is known for its grammar Nazis but there are also style Nazis, one of their concerns being whether there should be one or two spaces after a period (full- stop).  While its quite possible most neither notice nor care, obsessives in both factions feel strongly about this and Microsoft’s April 2020 update for Word users on the 365 platform (the old Microsoft Office 365), which included a new rule flagging double spacing as an error, triggered a minor twitterstorm.

The debate actually goes back centuries, mono and double spacing between sentences, sometimes within the same document, existing from the earliest days of mechanical printing and it’s a myth it has anything to do with proportional fonts.  Proportional (variable width) typefaces were created hundreds of years ago but by the nineteenth century, the double space between sentences was the usual practice in commercial publishing, a standardisation (in English) reinforced during the era of the typewriter (1880s-1980s).  Except for a tiny number of (initially very expensive) IBM machines (from 1942), typewriters universally used monotype typefaces, every character, regardless of shape, taking the space of an upper case M.  The two spaces between sentences became the standard for typists because it made the text easier to read, a practice which endured even after most commercial publishing had, by the mid-twentieth century, adopted single spacing.

Unlike typists, mechanical typesetters weren’t limited to the monotype.  However, the upper case M remained their baseline which came to be known as the “em”.  Units of space were developed as specific fractional segments based on the em, a linear measurement equal to the point size of the typeface. In 10 point type, the em is 10 points wide; in 12 point type, 12 points wide etc.  There were four ubiquitous spaces, thick, middle, thin, and hair, the thickest of which was less than an en (an en being half of an em).  When more horizontal space was needed, typesetters turned to the quadrat (from the Latin quadrates (squared)).  These precisely sized typographic blanks were used for indents, larger spacing, the creation of white lines, and the filling up of short lines and existed in printers’ jargon as en, em, two-em, three-em and four-em although, when setting poetry, special quadrats were sometimes cast to ensure the proper alignment of uniquely set lines.

Below are two examples of the first paragraph of IMDb's biography of Lindsay Lohan, rendered in a monotype font which emulates the output from a classic mechanical typewriter; the upper sample uses single spaces after each period, the lower two spaces.  The comparison illustrates (1) how the double-space between sentences was helpful with monospace typesetting because it so assisted readability and (2) how with proportional fonts the difference is probably so marginal as to be imperceptible to all but a trained (or obsessive) eye.

Microsoft’s 365 update is optional, those committed to the double space can switch off the rule but there’s little doubt the single space is now the more popular practice.  Neither is right or wrong and research about which renders text more readable has been inconclusive, proving only that the factions seem set in their views.  One finding from the research however was that most readers seemed not to care one way or the other; most not noticing even when both methods were applied even within the same paragraph.