Alienist

Alienist (pronounced eyl-yuh-nist or ey-lee-uh-nist)

(1) A medical practitioner specializing in the treatment of mental illness (archaic).

(2) In law, an expert witness who specializes in the legal aspects of mental illness and mental competence (now less common).

1864: From the French aliéniste, from aliéné (insane), the construct being alien(ation) + -ist.  Alien was from the Middle English alien, from the Old French alien & aliene, from the Latin aliēnus (belonging to someone else (the sense of that which was “exotic; foreign” came later), from alienare (deprive of reason, drive mad (literally “to make another's, estrange”)) from alius (other), from the primitive Indo-European hélyos (from which English ultimately gained “else”).  The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).  Alienist is a noun; the noun plural is alienists.

In English, the noun alienist was in 1864 adopted from the French to describe “one who scientifically treats or studies mental illness”.  The French aliéniste was a use of “alienation” in the sense of “insanity, loss of mental faculty”, a development in the use which from the fifteenth century had been used to mean “loss or derangement of mental faculties, insanity”, the notion drawn from the Latin alienare (deprive of reason, drive mad).  The use in English sounds strange to modern ears but was probably an improvement on the earlier “mad doctor” (ie a physician dealing with the mad although doubtless there were a few doctors who were madmen), noted since the early eighteenth century.  Although psychiatry really didn’t come to be accepted as part of mainstream medicine until the late nineteenth century, there had since antiquity been those (not always physicians) in many cultures who specialized in the care of those thought mad although institutionalized professionalism (as opposed to their employment in institutions known often as “lunatic asylums”) waited centuries to be formalized.

The word psychiatry dates from 1808 and was coined by Prussian physician Johann Christian Reil (1759–1813) as the German Psychiatrie (literally “medical treatment of the soul”, the construct being the Ancient Greek psykhē (soul) + -iatry (medical treatment) from the Greek iātrikos (medical) from iāsthai (to heal).  From this evolved the idea of physician specializing in psychiatry being a psychiatrist.  Dr Reil’s word caught on but wasn’t wholly without linguistic competition, psychiater (expert in mental diseases) in the literature since at least 1852.  Although Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) seems assumed by some almost to have “invented” psychiatry, his work in the late nineteen century was but one thread in a discipline both well established (if not wholly accepted by the medical establishment) and becoming increasingly used as the first generation of drug treatments became available.  What Freud did however in his systemised method of treatment (psychoanalysis) was define in the popular imagination just what a psychiatrist was.  The profession however had been around for a while and it was in 1841 the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane was founded; receiving a royal charter in 1926, it became the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Patient and alienist: Lindsay Lohan on Sigmund Freud’s couch.

In English, the word alienation had a varied history.  It began in the late fourteenth century in the law of real property (ie real estate) with the sense of “transfer of ownership, action of estranging”, from the Old French alienacion and directly from the Latin alienationem (nominative alienatio) (a transfer, surrender, separation), the noun of action from the past-participle stem of alienare (to make another's, part with; estrange, set at variance), from alienus (of or belonging to another person or place), from alius (another, other, different), from the primitive Indo-European root al- (beyond).  Early in the fifteenth century, the word was borrowed from the notaries and land conveyancers to mean “deprivation of mental faculties, insanity”, this time from a secondary sense of the Latin alienare (deprive of reason, drive mad) and for decades the word seems to appear as frequently in court records as medical journals, decisions on matters of madness very often the province of the magistracy.  A nice blending of the original idea in land ownership with the divorce courts saw “alienation of affection” (falling in love with another) adopted in the US as legal jargon in 1861.  In politics, the theorist most famously associated with alienation was Karl Marx (1818-1883) who in Das Kapital’s (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867-1894) three (very long) volumes explored, inter alia, the idea of the worker being alienated from the fruits of his labor by the employer extracting from the process the surplus value.  That has turned out to be an ongoing process.

In law, although terms like forensic psychiatrist are now preferred, an Alienist was a mental health professional who evaluated individuals in some way involved with a case before a court.  The most publicized of the alienists were those who appeared in notorious criminal trials where typically they were called upon to determine a defendant’s (and less commonly a victim’s or witness’s) state of mind at time of the alleged offense or since and thus their competency to stand trial, be cross-examined or give evidence.  Alienists almost always had a background in psychiatry or psychology and, in recent decades, also specialised training in the techniques of forensic evaluation.  Depending on the jurisdiction, alienists were sometimes asked to comment on recommendations for treatment and offer opinions on issues such as the potential for reform or likelihood of recidivism.

The idea of medical experts offering opinions on mental health matters is now so unexceptional as not usually to attract comment but in the nineteenth century when the first alienists began to be called as expert witnesses, it was novel.  Then, psychology (the clinical study of mental pathologies) was not only embryonic but subject to much criticism by doctors who insisted that diagnosis without empirical evidence was an absurdity and echos of the attitude persist in the views some have of the very existence of conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome (myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)).  Then, the mentally ill tended to be confined rather than treated and the psychology of the nineteenth century alienists was very much a laboratory discipline, the clinical or behavioral work today familiar as an orthodoxy mostly still decades away.  Instead, alienists analysed aspects of learning, perception and memory and their craft would now be understood as a kind of study of cognition.  As a profession, the alienists really advanced their discipline in the first three quarters of the twentieth century as understanding improved of the influence of the unconscious mind on individual actions.  Additionally, the consequences of the two world wars provided vast numbers of the mentally damaged to study and in the 1950s and 1960s, it came to be appreciated just how significant could be contextually such as poverty and racism.  All this happened while there were enormous advances in neurology and the physical brain itself came better to be understood, the idea of neuropsychological research coming to be accepted as a valid scientific method to explain the behaviour of individuals.  So much has changed including the nomenclature, the term alienist now rarely used in courts and if asked, most folk would likely assume an alienist is "one who studies aliens".

Erase

Erase (pronounced ih-reys)

(1) To rub or scrape out, as letters or characters written, engraved etc; efface.

(2) Completely to eliminate.

(3) To remove material recorded on magnetic tape or magnetic disk; synonymous for most purposes in this context with delete although technically, in computing, an erasure is the substitution of data with characters representing a null value whereas a deletion is the removal of an pointer entry in an index.

1595–1605: From the Middle English arasen & aracen (to eradicate, remove), from the Latin ērāsus, past participle of ērādere (scrape out, scrape off, shave, abolish, remove, to abrade), the construct being ex (out of) + radere (to scratch, scrape).  The use in the context of data on magnetic storage media (tapes, disks) dates from 1945, the technical distinction between erase and delete defined in computer science theory as early as 1947 though, to this day, the distinction escapes most users.  The adjective erasable dates from 1829.  Eraser (thing that erases writing) is attested from 1790, an invention of American English, agent noun from erase.  Originally, the product was a knife with which to scraping off ink, the first rubber devices for removing pencil marks not available until from 1858.

Erasure, Comrade Stalin and Lindsay Lohan

Evil dictators (like those running beach clubs or Greek islands) have their problems too and they like them to go away.  Where problems exist, they like them to be erased or is some other way to disappear.  Sometimes, the technical term is “unpersoned”.

The Erased

Not best pleased at images of the pleasingly pneumatic Karolina Palazi appearing on the official Lohan Beach Club Mykonos Beach Club Instagram account, Lindsay Lohan quickly responded with a post demanding her staff “Erase this random person at my beach”.  In the digital age, it can be difficult entirely to erase anything which appears on the internet and probably impossible for anything distributed on the big-data social media platforms.  That said, there is unpredictability to the fate of anything ever on-line.  There is (1) material which genuinely vanishes forever, (2) stuff which proves impossible to eradicate despite best efforts, and (3) things which were thought lost, only to re-appear.  Noted for some time, the issue will be of increasing interest in the future, the internet being a distributed system with no centralised repository indicating what is held where, by whom and whether it is accessible (by someone) on or off-line or in storage.

The Disappeared

General Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006; military dictator of Chile 1973-1990).

This is the relatively new name for the centuries-old practice of secretly kidnapping or arresting people, then imprisoning or killing them, all without due process of law.  It’s most associated with the late twentieth-century military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Brazil but is used to describe the practice in many South and Central American republics and of late, others, sometimes at scale.  Although the practice probably pre-dates even modern humans, the word, in this context appears first to have been used by Joseph Heller (1923–1999) in the satirical Catch-22 (1961) when describing how the US military dealt with malcontents.  However it’s done, the person disappears without trace.

The Unpersoned

Unpersoning wasn’t invented in the Soviet Union but it was under comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) it was undertaken at scale, although, like later attempts on the internet, the process wasn’t always perfect because it was performed on extant physical material, some of which inevitably escaped attention.  The process interested critics in the West; in George Orwell's (1903–1950), dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), protagonist Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth where his job is to alter historical records to conform to the state's ever-changing version of history.  Done in the USSR mostly between 1928-1953, unpersoning was the physical modification of existing text and imagery, modified to erase from history those who had fallen from favor and it’s thought the most extensively unpersoned figure in the USSR was comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940).  Comrade Stalin had him murdered in Mexico, the assassin's choice of weapon an ice axe.

Erased from history: Before & after being unpersoned, Comrades Molotov (1890-1986) & Stalin with Comrade Nikolai Yezhov (1895-1940), head of the NKVD (one of the predecessors of the KGB); Comrade Stalin had him shot.

In the Soviet Union, the process was essentially as Orwell described and even in the age of digital editing it's probably often still done in a similar manner.  A photograph would be passed to the party's technicians with the comrade(s) to be unpersoned marked in some obvious way, the preferred technique apparently a black crayon.

Succeeding where others failed: Erasing crooked Hillary Clinton

The White House situation room, 2 May 2011 (official WH photo; left) and as depicted in Di Tzeitung (right).

Unpersoning can also be sex-specific (gender-based the currently preferred term).  In May 2011, the Orthodox Jewish news paper Di Tzeitung (a Brooklyn-based weekly) was forced to apologize after unpersoning the women in the photograph released by the White House showing President Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) and his staff monitoring the raid by US Navy Seals in which Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) was killed while in his Pakistani compound.  Unpersoned were then counterterrorism director, Audrey Tomason (b circa 1977) and then secretary of state, crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).  Di Tzeitung's subsequent apologia was somewhat nuanced.  The publication reiterated it did not publish images of women and thus sent its “regrets and apologies” to the White House and the State Department, not because it had unpersoned women but because their photo editor had not read the “fine print” in the text issued by the White House (which accompanied the photograph) which forbid any changes.  Di Tzeitung further explained it has a “long standing editorial policy” of not publishing images of women because its readers “believe that women should be appreciated for who they are and what they do, not for what they look like and the Jewish laws of modesty are an expression of respect for women, not the opposite”.  They added that Di Tzeitung regarded crooked Hillary Clinton (a former US senator (Democrat) for New York who secured overwhelming majorities in the Orthodox Jewish communities) highly and “appreciated her unique capabilities, talents and compassion for all”.  It concluded by acknowledging it “should not have published the altered picture”.  Commentators noted the practice is not unusual in some ultra-Orthodox Jewish publications which regard depictions of the female form as “immodest”.  Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to the apology although there were cynics who wondered if the president wished it were that easy to get rid of crooked Hillary.

The Watergate tapes and the erased 18½ minutes

Looking over his shoulder: Richard Nixon and HR Halderman in the White House.

Tapes, audio and video, have played a part in many political downfalls but none is more famous than the “smoking gun” tape which compelled the resignation of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) after it revealed he was involved in the attempt to cover-up the involvement in the Watergate break-in of some connected to his administration.  Recording conversations in the White House had been going on for years and Nixon initially had the equipment removed, the apparatus re-installed two years later after it was found there was no other way to ensure an accurate record of discussions was maintained.  Few outside a handful of the president’s inner circle knew of the tapes and they became public knowledge only in mid-1973 when, under oath before a congressional hearing, a White House official confirmed their existence.  That was the point at which Nixon should have destroyed the tapes and for the rest of his life he must sometimes have reflected that but for that mistake, his presidency might have survived because, although by then the Watergate scandal had been a destabilizing distraction, there was at that point no “smoking gun”, nothing which linked Nixon himself to any wrongdoing.  As it was, he didn’t and within days subpoenas were served on the White House demanding the tapes and that made them evidence; the moment for destruction had passed.  Nixon resisted the subpoenas, claiming executive privilege and thus ensued the tussle between the White House and Watergate affair prosecutors which would see the “Saturday Night Massacre” during which two attorneys-general were fired, the matter ultimately brought before the US Supreme Court which ruled against the president.  Finally, the subpoenaed tapes were surrendered on 5 August 1973, the “smoking gun” tape revealing Nixon and his chief of staff (HR Haldeman, 1926–1993; White House chief of staff 1969-1973) discussing a cover-up plan and at that point, political support in the congress began to evaporate and the president was advised that impeachment was certain and even Republican senators would vote to convict.  On 8 August, Nixon announced his resignation, leaving office the next day.

Uher 5000 reel-to-reel tape recorder used by a White House secretary to create the tape (20 June 1972) with the 18½ minute gap.  (Government Exhibit #60: Records of District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21. National Archives Identifier: 595593).

To this day, mystery surrounds one tape in particular, a recording of a discussion between Nixon and Halderman on 20 June 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in.  Of obviously great interest, when reviewed, there was found to be a gap of 18½ minutes, the explanations offered of how, why or by whom the erasure was effected ranging from the humorously accidental to the darkly conspiratorial but half a century on, it remains a mystery.  Taking advantage of new data-recovery technology, the US government did in subsequent decades make several attempts to “un-delete” the gap but without success and it may be, given the nature of magnetic tape, that there is literally nothing left to find.  However, the tape is stored in a secure, climate-controlled facility in case technical means emerge and while it’s unlikely the contents would reveal anything not already known or assumed, it would be of great interest to historians.  What would be even more interesting is the identity of who it was that erased the famous 18½ minutes but that will likely never be known; after fifty years, it’s thought that were there to be any death-bed confessions, they should by now have been heard.  Some have their lists of names of those who might have "pressed the erase button" and while mostly sub-sets of Watergate's "usual suspects", one who tends not to appear is Nixon himself, the usual consensus being he was technically too inept to operate a tape machine though it's not impossible he ordered someone to do the deed.  However it happened, the suspects most often mentioned as having had their "finger on the button" (which may have been a foot-pedal) are Nixon's secretary and his chief of staff.

Rorschach

Rorschach (pronounced raw-shack)

(1) A canton and town in Switzerland.

(2) A personality test using ink-blots

1927: The ink-blot based personality analysis was first published in codified form in 1927, the genesis of which was a 1921 paper by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1885-1922).  Rorschach (Wahlkreis) is a constituency of the canton of Saint Gallen, Switzerland and Rorschach is its largest town.  The town lies on the Swiss side of Lake Constance, the construct of the name an early form of the German Röhr (reeds) + Schachen (lakeside).

The Rorschach test was for some time a standard clinical diagnostic tool in psychology & psychiatry.  It was a collection of ten “ink blots”, five rendered in grey scale, two in grey & red and three in color, all printed on separate cards and presented to the subjects who were asked (1) What might this mean? & (2) What parts of the card made you say that?  The usual protocol was to provide a pencil and have the subject write their responses in the space underneath the image although, depending on the circumstances, a clinician might engage with the subject and obtain more of their thoughts or the tests could immediately be taken for analysis.  Fond of jargon, the profession even took the opportunity to coin a word to describe specific responses, a subject thought to be especially demonstrative in their response to a Rorschach ink blot said to be exhibiting "extratensive" tendencies.  As an adjective it was thus a synonym of "extroverted" and is occasionally seen outside of psychology where it probably adds little but confusion.  It served also as a noun, the relevant subjects being labelled "extratensives".

Lindsay Lohan in Rorschach Ink-Blot Test inspired gold beaded cocktail dress at the Source Code premiere, Crosby Street Hotel, New York City, March 2011.  The dress was paired with black patent ankle strap platform pumps shoes and matching opaque tights.

The idea of using indeterminate and ambiguous shapes as a way of assessing an individual's personality had been around for centuries before Dr Rorschach began his research and in the nineteenth century there were even popular parlor games which used the idea although they were designed to amuse rather than analyze.  What made Dr Rorschach’s work different was the sheer quantity of the data with with he worked, his research encompassing some 300 patients in mental institutions (with a control group of 100 “normal” subjects) to whom to he exposed over 400 ink-blots before selecting the ten which had proved to be of the greatest diagnostic utility.  Although the method was not greatly different from the games, the Rorschach test was genuinely scientific in its design and the systematic approach linking impressionistic responses to ambiguous shapes, this producing evidence of certain tendencies.  Within the still embryonic psychiatric profession, his approach was thought novel and initially received little support.  His book (a 174-page monograph Psychodiagnostik (Psychodiagnostics)), when eventually published in 1921 contained the structure of the ink-blot tests and the results of the 300 patient survey yet it attracted more interest from intrigued literary reviewers than the medical journals and he died little more than a year after its release.  Even the appearance of reviews in the odd literary magazine however did little to stimulate appeal because the book was very much a work by a scientist for other scientists and Dr Rorschach had made no attempt to make his findings accessible to a general audience.  It wasn’t until the work was republished and others began to refine the methodology that others saw potential, especially after professional mathematicians added rigor to the statistical models used to generate the scores from which conclusions were drawn.

However, those who inherited the work also shifted the goal posts.  While Dr Rorschach had always intended the ink-blots to be only a helpful tool in the diagnosis of schizophrenia, such was the expansion of the profession in the inter-war years that many became interested and, by 1938, the test had been adapted and was being promoted as a kind of “personality testing kit”.  It was quite a departure from Dr Rorschach’s original vision which had been designed deliberately to maintain some ambiguity in the images, his belief that the diagnosis of schizophrenia lay in the margins between the possible responses whereas when used as a personality testing tool, the answers took on the character of a parameter which, when collectively assessed with the provided statistical tool, placed patients in categories.

The Rorschach cards

The test in that form proved highly successful, its proliferation assisted by the demands of wartime and the military’s need for psychological testing, the Rorschach kit easily produced, more popular with subjects than many other methods and, as a piece of mathematics, able easily to be collated into the big data sets electronic machines were beginning to make possible.  It had that those qualities the military so adore: Speed, standardization and simplicity.  It was therefore by the mid 1940s a standard part of psychological testing, used in everything from job applications to assessing an inmate’s eligibility for parole so it was perhaps inevitable it would be applied to the defendants in the Nuremberg trial (1945-1946).  Even before the International Military Tribunal (IMT; which would conduct the trial) assembled, the authorities in charge of the Nazis in custody insisted on psychiatrists and psychologists being available as soon as the prisoners had been assembled.  There were a number of reasons for this, notably that they wanted to ensure the prisoners had the support necessary to dissuade them from attempting suicide and there was the need also to ensure all were mentally competent to stand trial.  Additionally, there was genuine curiosity about the Nazis because never had there been such an opportunity to subject to tests two-dozen odd who were responsible for what was becoming clear were the greatest crimes in history.  The question then, as now was: Are “normal ordinary people” able to be drawn to commit evil acts or are some people evil.

The Rorschach tests were of course only one of the tools the clinicians assigned to Nuremberg used and the conclusion drawn was that all defendants were sane in the sense they were legally sane and thus mentally competent to stand trial even if they were depressed psychopaths (that seemed to be the most common phrase).  Quite what part the tests played in this isn’t clear but the test results themselves assumed a life independent of the trial because of a dispute between the two clinicians most involved in the testing and it wasn’t until the 1990s they were (almost) all published.  This psychological time capsule proved irresistibly tempting for one of the US’s foremost Rorschach experts who over the years had assembled records which could be used as an extraordinarily diverse control group which included (in the hundreds) medical students, Unitarian ministers, psychology students, criminals, business executives and random patients from private practice.  From this were selected the clerics and psychiatric outpatients, the purpose of a comparison with the Nuremberg Nazis being a critique of a recently published analysis of the test results which had concluded the defendants (as individuals and a representatives of the whole Nazi hierarchy) were “cursed beyond redemption” and thus profoundly of “the other”.  Their work was not entirely conventional by accepted scientific standards and they tacitly acknowledged some of the long acknowledged limitations of the test but never wavered from their finding “…the Nazis were not psychologically normal or healthy individuals”.

Defendants in the dock, Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, 1945-1946.

That was as controversial a view in the 1990s as it had been fifty years earlier and if a blind test could not distinguish of the Nazi’s data from the two control groups, at least some doubt would be cast.  Accordingly, ten Rorschach experts were assembled and asked to assemble them into three groups.  All that did was identify the high, medium and low-functioning of each group but there was nothing in them which separated the Nazis.  That was interesting but what was probably definitive was that even when told the nature of the data, the experts were unable to discern any difference between the responses which would enable the Nazis to be identified.  Perhaps sadly, the Nazis may have been as ordinary as they appeared in the dock, the implication being we're all capable of evil, given the right temptation, a nod to an earlier memorable phrase spoken of them: "The banality of evil".  

As that might indicate, like many tests in psychology, the Rorschach is probably useful if its limitations are recognized and the interpretations thought valid decades ago are no longer treated as proven science.  For example there may be something which can be deduced from a subject assessing the whole image in their response which is different for one who picks just a section or who finds something different in different parts but whether there’s anything substantive in the difference between seeing moth and a butterfly may be dubious.  The test is still widely used although many have abandoned it though it’s famously a cult in Japan where it’s one of the profession’s standard tools.  Elsewhere use is mixed.  Interestingly, while the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV (1994) did not endorse or recommend the use of any particular projective test, it did note many were used in clinical practice but cautioned that the validity and reliability of these tests had not been firmly established, urging caution.  Neither the DSM-5 (2013) nor DSM-5-TR (2022) make any reference to the Rorschach test.

Cammer

Cammer (pronounced kham-ah)

(1) A content-provider who uses a webcam to distribute imagery on some basis (applied especially to attractive young females associated with the early use of webcams).

(2) Slang for an engine produced in small numbers by Ford (US) in the mid-late 1960s.

(3) A general term for any camera operator (now less common because the use in the context of webcam feeds prevailed.

1964: A diminutive of single overhead cam(shaft).  Cam was from the sixteenth century Middle English cam, from the Dutch kam (cog of a wheel (originally, comb)) and was cognate with the English comb, the form preserved in modern Dutch compounds such as kamrad & kamwiel (cog wheel).  The association with webcams began in the mid-1990s, cam in that context a contraction of camera.  The Latin camera (chamber or bedchamber) was from the Ancient Greek καμάρα (kamára) (anything with an arched cover, a covered carriage or boat, a vaulted room or chamber, a vault) of uncertain origin; a doublet of chamber.  Dating from 1708, it was from the Latin that Italian gained camera and Spanish camara, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek kamára and the Old Church Slavonic komora, the Lithuanian kamara and the Old Irish camra all are borrowings from Latin.  Cammer was first used in 1964 as oral shorthand for Ford’s 427 SHOC (single overhead camshaft) V8 engine, the alternative slang form being the phonetic “sock” and it became so associated with the one item that “cammer” has never been applied to other overhead camshaft engines.  The first web-cam (although technically it pre-dated the web) feed dates from 1991 and the first to achieve critical mass (ie “went viral”) was from 1996.  Cammer is a noun; the noun plural is cammers. 

Lindsay Lohan on webcam in Get a Clue (2002) a Disney Channel original movie.

The word came be used for photographic devices as a clipping of the New Latin camera obscura (dark chamber) a black box with a lens that could project images of external objects), contrasted with the (circa 1750) camera lucida (light chamber), which used prisms to produce an image on paper beneath; it was used to generate an image of a distant object.  Camera was thus (circa 1840) adopted in nineteenth century photography because early cameras used a pinhole and a dark room.  The word was extended to filming devices from 1928. Camera-shy (not wishing to be photographed) dates from 1890, the first camera-man (one who operates a camera) recorded in 1908.  The first webcam feed (pre-dating the public availability of the worldwideweb (www) which permitted feeds to the wild), dates from 1991.  

jennicam.org (1996-2003)

xcoffee cam-feed of Trojan Room coffee pot, University of Cambridge, 1991-2001.

It wasn’t the internet’s first webcam feed, that seems to have been one in started in 1991 (before the worldwideweb was available to the public) aimed at a coffee machine in a fourth floor office at the University of Cambridge's Computer Science Department, created by scientists based in a lab the floor below so they would know whether to bother walking up a flight of stairs for a cup, but in 1996, nineteen year-old Jennifer Ringley (b 1976), from a webcam in her university dorm room, broadcast herself live to the whole world, 24/7.  With jennicam.org, she effectively invented "lifecasting" and while the early feed was of grainy, still, monochrome images (updated every fifteen seconds) which, considered from the twenty-first century, sounds not interesting and hardly viral, it was one of the first internet sensations, attracting a regular following of four-million which peaked at almost twice that.  According to internet lore, it more than once crashed the web, seven million being a high proportion of the web users at the time and the routing infrastructure then wasn't as robust as it would become.  Tellingly, Ms Ringley majored in economics which explains the enticingly suggestive title "jennicam" whereas the nerds at Cambridge could think of nothing more catchy than "xcoffee".  

Jenni and pussy.

Although there were more publicized moments, jennicam.org was mostly a slideshow of the mundane: Jennifer studying at her desk, doing the laundry or brushing her teeth but it hinted at the realisation of earlier predictions, Andy Warhol's (1928–1987) fifteen minutes of fame and Marshall McLuhan's (1911-1980) global village.  While not exactly pre-dating reality television, jennicam.org was years before the genre became popular and was closer to real than the packaged products became.

The 1964 Ford 427 SOHC (the Cammer)

1964 426 HEMI in Plymouth race-car.

There was cheating aplenty in 1960s NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) racing but little so blatant as Chrysler in 1964 fielding their 426 HEMI, a pure racing engine, in what was supposed to be a series for mass-produced vehicles.  Whatever the legal position, it was hardly in the spirit of gentlemanly competition though in fairness to Chrysler, they didn't start it, NASCAR for years something of a parallel universe.  In 1957, the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) had announced a ban on auto-racing and the public positions of General Motors (GM), Ford and Chrysler supported the stand, leaving the sport to dealer and privateers although, factory support of these operations was hardly a secret.  NASCAR liked things this way believing the popularity of their “stock cars” relied on the vehicles raced being close to (ie "in stock") what was available for purchase by the general public.  Additionally, they wished to maintain the sport as affordable even for low budget teams and the easy way to do this was restricting the hardware to mass-produced, freely available parts, thereby leveling the playing field.  The façade was maintained until the summer of 1962 when Ford announced it was going to "go racing".  Market research had identified the competitive advantage to be gained from motorsport in an era when, uniquely, the demographic bulge of the baby-boomers, unprecedented prosperity and cheap gas (petrol) would coalesce, Ford understanding that in the decade ahead, a historically huge catchment of 17-25 year old males with high disposable incomes were there to be sold stuff and they’d likely be attracted to fast cars.  Thus began Ford's "Total Performance" era which would see successful participation in just about everything from rally tracks to Formula One, including four memorable victories at the Le Mans twenty-four hour classic.

1963 Chevrolet 427 "Mystery Motor".

The market leader, the more conservative GM, said they would "continue to abide by the spirit of the AMA ban" and, despite the scepticism of some, it seems they meant it because their racing development was halted though not without a parting shot, Chevrolet in 1963 providing their preferred team a 427 cubic inch (7 litre) engine that came to be known as the "mystery motor".  It stunned all with its pace but, being prematurely delivered, lacked reliability and, after a few races, having proved something, GM departed, saving NASCAR the bother of the inevitable squabble over eligibility.

1961 Ford Galaxie Starliner (left) & 1962 Galaxie with “distinguished hardtop styling” (aka “boxtop”, right).

Ford stayed and cheated, though not yet with engines.  The aerodynamic qualities the 1960-1961 Galaxie Starliner possessed by virtue of its gently sloping rear roof-line generated both speed and stability on the NASCAR ovals; that made it a successful race-car but in the showrooms, after some early enthusiasm, sales dropped so it was replaced in 1962 with an implementation of the “formal” style which had been so well-received when used on the Thunderbird.  As the marketing department predicted (or, more correctly, worked out from the results of their focus-group sessions), what they called “distinguished hardtop styling” proved more commercially palatable but while customers may have been seduced, the physics of fluid dynamics didn’t change and the “buffeting” induced at speeds above 140 mph (225 km/h) limited performance, adversely affected straight-line stability (especially when in close proximity to other cars) and increased fuel consumption.  What the distinguished hardtop styling had done was make the Galaxie less competitive on the circuits, the loss of up to 3 mph (5 km/h) in top speed the difference being winning and losing; Ford’s NASCAR teams dubbed the look the “boxtop”, boxes not noted for their fine aerodynamic properties and years later, Chrysler too would discover just how significant at high speed is the slope of the rear glass.

Beware of imitations: Images from Ford's 1962 Galaxie Starlift "brochure" which didn't fool NASCAR.  

Quickly to regain the lost aerodynamic advantage, Ford fabricated a handful of detachable fibreglass hard-tops which could be “bolted on”, essentially transforming a Galaxie convertible back into something as slippery (and even a little lighter) as the previous Starliner.  Having no intention of incurring the expense of designing and engineering them to an acceptable consumer standard (which they knew few anyway would buy) Ford simply gave the hand-made plastic roof the name “Starlift”, allocated a part-number and even mocked-up a brochure for NASCAR to read.  Although on paper it appeared a FADC (factory-authorized dealer accessory) like any other (floor-mats, mud flaps et al), an inspection of the device revealed it was obviously phoney, the rear passenger glass on each side not fitting the sloping C-pillar, demanding the use of a pair of tacked-on plastic fillers to close the gap and it was obvious the thing wasn’t close to being waterproof.  NASCAR outlawed the scam.  However, because five Starlift-equipped Galaxie convertibles had qualified for a postponed event at Atlanta before the ban, they were permitted to run in the re-scheduled event and on the only occasion it was raced in NASCAR competition it won, the 100% win-record ranking it among the sport’s most successful models.

The 483 cid Galaxie Starlift at speed, Bonneville, October 1962. 

Banned from the circuits though it was, Ford did manage to give the Starlift one final fling.  In October 1962, one fitted with an “experimental” version of the FE V8 with a displacement of 483 cubic inches (7.9 litres) was taken to Bonneville where it was used to set a slew of international speed records, clocked at 182.19 mph (293.21 km/h) and averaging 163.91 mph (263.79 km/h) over 500 miles (804.67 km).  Noting the big numbers, NASCAR took the opportunity to impose a 7 litre (usually expressed as 427 cid) displacement limit, one rule that was easy to enforce.

Galaxies with "sports hardtop" roofline, Firecracker 400, Daytona International Speedway, July, 1963.

Hobbled by the distinguished hardtop styling, Ford managed to win only another four races in a season dominated by Pontiac but the engineers solved the problem in early 1963 with the “sports hardtop” roofline which pleased both the pubic buying cars and the teams racing them.  Remarkably, the revision to the roofline, in conjunction with increasing engine displacement from 406 cubic inches (6.6 litres) to 427 (strictly speaking it was 426 (7.0)) created one of the era’s more improbably successful race cars which enjoyed great success in saloon car events in England, Europe, South Africa, Australia & New Zealand until the lighter and more nimble Mustang became available.

1964 427 SOHC (Cammer).  Note the famously long timing chain.

Ford, which while enjoying great success in 1963 had actually adhered to the engine rules, responded to Chrysler’s 426 HEMI (which had dominated the 1964 season) within a remarkable ninety days with a derivation of their 427 FE which replaced the pushrod activated valves with two single overhead camshafts (SOHC), permitting higher engine speeds and more efficient combustion, thereby gaining perhaps a hundred horsepower.  The engine, officially called the 427 SOHC, was nicknamed the Cammer (although some, noting the acronym, called it the "sock").  The problem for NASCAR was that neither the 426 HEMI nor the 427 Cammer was in a car which could be bought from a showroom.

1964 Chrysler 426 HEMI DOHC prototype.

Not best pleased, NASCAR was mulling over things when Chrysler responded to the 427 Cammer by demonstrating a mock-up of their 426 HEMI with a pair of heads using double overhead camshafts (DOHC) and four valves per cylinder instead of the usual two.  Fearing an escalating war of technology taking their series in an undesired direction, in October 1964, NASCAR cracked down and issued new rules for the 1965 season.  Although retaining the 427 cubic inch limit, engines now had to be mass-production units available for general sale and thus no hemi heads or overhead camshafts would be allowed  The rule change had been provoked also by an increasing death toll as speeds rose beyond what was safe for both tyres and on circuits.

1965 Ford 427 FE.

That meant Ford’s 427 FE was eligible but Chrysler’s 426 HEMI was not and a disgruntled Chrysler withdrew from NASCAR, shifting their efforts to drag-racing where the rules of the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) were more accommodating (while it's not clear if Chrysler complied even with those, the NHRA welcomed them anyway).  In 1965, Chrysler seemed happy with the 426 HEMI's impact over the quarter-mile and Ford seemed happy being able to win just about every NASCAR race.  Not happy was NASCAR which was watching crowds and revenue drop as the audience proved less interested in a sport where results had become predictable, their hope the rule changes would entice GM back to motor-sport not realised.  NASCAR audiences were a tribal lot and to attract the "Ford people", "GM people" and "Chrysler people", competitive cars from each needed to be fielded.

1966 Chrysler 426 Street HEMI.

It was 1967 before everybody was, (more or less) happy again.  Chrysler, which claimed it had intended always to make the 426 HEMI available to the general public and that the 1964 race programme had been just part of engineering development, for 1966 introduced the 426 Street HEMI, a detuned version of the race engine, a general-production option for just about any car in which it would fit (indeed, in 1966 a handful were installed even in four-door sedans although Chrysler did decline to produce a Street HEMI station wagon).  NASCAR responded quickly, announcing the HEMI now complied with the rules and was welcome, with a few restrictions, to compete.  Ford assumed NASCAR needed them more than they needed NASCAR and announced they would be using the 427 Cammer in 1966.  NASCAR was now trapped by its own precedents, conceding only that Ford could follow Chrysler’s earlier path, saying the 427 Cammer would be regarded “…as an experimental engine in 1966… (to) …be reviewed for eligibility in 1967."   In other words, eligibility depended still on mass-production.

427 SOHC installed in a replica (by ERA) of a 1966 Shelby American AC Cobra 427SC.

Ford, although unable easily to create a 427 Street Cammer, recalled the Starlift trick and announced the SOHC was now available as a production item.  That was, at best, economical with the truth, given not only could nobody walk into a showroom and buy a car with a 427 Cammer under the hood but it seemed at the time not always possible to purchase one even in a crate.  Realising the futility of kicking the can down the road, NASCAR decided to kick it to the umpire, hoping all sides would abide by the decision, referring the matter to the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the world governing body for motor-sport.  Past-masters at compromise, the FIA approved the 427 Cammer but imposed a weight handicap on any car in which it was used.

Cutaway Ford FE V8s: the 427 (left) and 427 SOHC (right).

Ford called that not just unfair but also unsafe, citing concerns at the additional stress the heavier vehicles would place of suspension and tyres, adding their cars couldn’t “… be competitive under these new rules."  Accordingly, Ford threatened to withdraw from NASCAR in 1966 but found the public’s sympathy was with Chrysler which had done the right thing and made their engine available to the public.  Ford sulked for a while but returned to the fray in late 1966, the math of NASCAR’s new rules having choked the HEMI a little so the 427 FE remained competitive, resulting in the curious anomaly of the 426 Street HEMI running dual four-barrel induction while on the circuits only a single carburetor was permitted.  Mollified, Ford returned in force for 1967 and the arrangement, which ushered in one of the classic eras of motorsport, proved durable, the 427 FE used until 1969 and the 426 HEMI until the big block engines were finally banned after the 1974 season, three years after the last 426 Street HEMI was sold.

Ford 427 Cammer in 1967 Fairlane.

While the 426 HEMI DOHC never ran (the display unit's valve train was electrically activated), the 427 Cammer was produced for sale in crates and although the number made seems to be uncertain, most sources suggest it may have been as high as several-hundred and it enjoyed decades of success in various forms of racing including off-shore power boats.  Whether it would ever have been reliable in production cars is questionable.  Such was Ford’s haste to produce the thing there wasn’t time to develop a proper gear drive system for the various shafts so it ended up with a timing-chain over six feet (1.8m) long.  For competition use, where engines are re-built with some frequency, that proved satisfactory but road cars are expected to run for thousands of miles between services and there was concern the tendency of timing-chains to stretch would impair reliability and tellingly, Ford never considered the 427 Cammer for a production car.  Production cars, unlike racing engines, attract warranties.  The 427 Cammer attracted a following and, even today, it’s possible to buy all the parts needed to build one.

Herostratic

Herostratic (pronounced hera-strat-ick)

The act of seeking fame at any cost; desire for notoriety.

1640s: First noted in English in translation of fourth century documents, the construct was Herostratus +‎ -ic 

Herostratus was a learned borrowing from the Latin Hērostratus, from the Ancient Greek Ἡρόστρατος (Hēróstratos), the construct being Ἥρᾱ (Hḗrā) (Greek goddess of marriage, women, and family) + στρᾰτός (stratós) (army, military force; band or body of men; common people).  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).  Herostratical is an adjective and herostratically is an adverb.  The jocular noun herostratisphere is non-standard.

Attention seeking

In Asia Minor (near present-day Selcuk, Türkiye), in a sacred grove not far from the city of Ephesus, stood the Great Temple of Artemis (also known as the Temple of Diana), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. During the evening of 21 July, 356 BC, Herostratus (also called Erostratus) of Ephesus saturated the timber and fabric furnishings of the temple with gallons of oil and when all was thoroughly soaked, he set fires in many places, inside and out.  Within minutes, as he had planned, the fire was uncontrollable and the temple was doomed.  Coincidently, on the day the temple was razed, Alexander the Great (356-323 DC) was born.

St. Paul Preaching in Ephesus Before the Temple of Artemis (1885), by Adolf Pirsch (1858-1929).

Herostratus was apparently a wholly undistinguished and previously obscure citizen, different from others only in his desire to be famous and the lengths to which he was prepared to go to achieve that fame.  As shocked Ephesians rushed to the fire, Herostratus met them and proudly proclaimed his deed, telling them his name would for all eternity be remembered as the man who burned down the Great Temple of Artemis and razed one of the wonders of the world.  Herostratus was, as he expected, executed for his arson.  In an attempt to deny him the fame he craved, the Ephesians passed the damnatio memoriae law, making it a capital crime ever to speak of him or his deed.  However, it proved impossible to suppress the truth about such an event; the historian Theopompus (circa 380–circa 315 BC) relates the story in his Philippica and it later appears in the works of the historian Strabo (circa 64 BC–circa 24 AD).  His name thus became a metonym for someone who commits a criminal act in order to become noted.  Subsequent attempts to erase names from history (tried on a grand scale by comrade Stalin and the Kim dynasty in the DPRK) seem always to fail.

It's unfortunate history didn't unfold so Android and iOS were available in 356 BC so  Herostratus could have played Lindsay Lohan's The Price of Fame instead of turning to arson.  The game was said to be "a parody on celebrity culture and paparazzi" and enabled players to become world famous celebrities by creating an avatar which could "purchase outfits, accessories, toys and even pets".  Played well. he could have entered a virtual herostratisphere and the temple might stand today.  As Ms Lohan would understand, the tale of Herostratus reminds all that for everything one does, there's a price to be paid. 

Like many of the tales from antiquity, the story of destruction by arson is doubted.  Various conjectures have been offered, some of which doubt the technical possibility of what Herostratus is said to have done, some claiming it was a kind of inside job by the temple’s priests who had their own reasons for wanting a new building and even a reference to the writings of Aristotle which offers a lightning strike as the catalyst for the conflagration.  However, whatever did or didn’t happen in 356 BC, the word herostatic, to describe one who seeks fame at any cost, has endured, the attempt to make his name unspeakable as doomed as the temple.