Blueprint

Blueprint (pronounced bloo-print)

(1) A process of photographic printing, used chiefly in copying architectural and mechanical drawings, which produces a white line on a blue background; also called a cyanotype.

(2) A physical print made by this process.

(3) A slang term for a digital rendition of the process.

(4) A slang term for such a drawing, whether blue or not.

(5) By analogy, a detailed outline or plan of action (in text or image).

(6) To make a blueprint.

(7) A technique for optimizing the performance of internal combustion engines by machining (or matching) components to their exact specifications.

1887: The construct was blue + print (blue print and blue-print (1882) were the rarely used alternative spellings).  The figurative sense of "detailed plan" dates from 1926 and use as a verb is from 1939.

Blue dates from the sixteenth century and was from the Middle English blewe, from the Anglo-Norman blew (blue), from the Frankish blāu (blue) (possibly via the Medieval Latin blāvus & blāvius (blue)), from the Proto-Germanic blēwaz (blue, dark blue), from the primitive Indo-European bhlēw (yellow, blond, grey).  It was cognate with the dialectal English blow (blue), the Scots blue, blew (blue), the North Frisian bla & blö (blue), the Saterland Frisian blau (blue), the Dutch blauw (blue), the German blau (blue), the Danish, Norwegian & Swedish blå (blue), the Icelandic blár (blue).  It was cognate also with the obsolete Middle English blee (color) related to the Welsh lliw (color), the Latin flāvus (yellow) and the Middle Irish blá (yellow). A doublet of blae.  The present spelling in English has existed since the sixteenth century and was common by circa 1700.  Many colors have in English been productive in many senses and blue has contributed to many phrases in fields as diverse as mental health (depression, sadness), semiotics (coolness in temperature), popular music (the blues), social conservatism (blue stocking; blue rinse), politics (conservative (Tory) & Whig identifiers and (unrelated) the US Democratic Party), labor-market segmentation (blue-collar), social class (blue-blood), stock market status (blue-chip) and, inexplicably, as an intensifier (blue murder).

Print dates from circa 1300 and was from the Middle English printen, prenten, preenten & prente (impression, mark made by impression upon a surface), an apheretic form of emprinten & enprinten (to impress; imprint).  It was related to the Dutch prenten (to imprint), the Middle Low German prenten (to print; write), the Danish prente (to print), the Swedish prenta (to write German letters).  The late Old French preinte (impression) was a noun use of the feminine past participle of preindre (to press, crush), altered from prembre, from the Latin premere (to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress), from the primitive Indo-European root per- (to strike).  The Old French word was also the source of the Middle Dutch (prente (the Dutch prent) and was borrowed by other Germanic languages.

The sense of "a printed publication" (applied later particularly to newspapers) was from the 1560s.  The meaning "printed lettering" is from the 1620s and print-hand (print-like handwriting) from the 1650s.  The sense of "picture or design from a block or plate" dates from the 1660s while the meaning "piece of printed cloth or fabric" appeared first in 1756.  The photographic sense emerged apparently only by 1853, some three decades after the first photographs, the use evolving as printed photographs became mass-market consumer products.  Print journalism seemed to have been described as such only from 1962, a form of differentiation from the work of those employed by television broadcasters.

Blueprinting internal combustion engines is the practice of disassembling the unit and machining the critical components (piston, conrods etc) to the point where they exactly meet the stated specifications (dimensions & weight).  Essentially, the process is one of exactitude, using precision tools to make components produced using the techniques of mass production (which inherently involves wider tolerances) and modifying them by using tighter tolerances, meeting exact design specifications.  It’s most associated with high-performance racing cars, especially those which compete in “standard-production” classes which don’t permit modifications to most components.  In some cases, especially with factory-supported operations, the components might be specially selected, prior to assembly.

Blueprint of the USS Missouri (BB-63), an Iowa-class battleship launched in 1944.  Missouri was the last battleship commissioned by the US Navy.

The first blueprint was developed in 1842 by English mathematician, astronomer, chemist & experimental photographer Sir John Herschel (1792-1871).  What he then termed a “cyanotype process” eliminated the need to copy original drawings by means of hand-tracing, a cumbersome, time consuming (and therefore expensive) process.  At what was then an astonishingly low cost, it permitted the rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number of copies.  The cyanotype process used a drawing on semi-transparent paper that was weighted down on top of a sheet of paper which was then placed over another piece of paper, coated with a mix of ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferrocyanide (derived from an aqueous solution and latter dried).  When the two papers were exposed to light, the chemical reaction produced an insoluble blue compound called blue ferric ferrocyanide (which became famous as Prussian Blue), except where the blueprinting paper was covered and the light was blocked by the lines of the original drawing. After the paper was washed and dried to preserve those lines, the result was a negative image of white (or whatever color the blueprint paper originally was) against a dark blue background.  White was by far the most used paper and the most common cyanotypes were thus blue with white lines.  At least by 1882 they were being described as “blue prints” but by 1887, they were almost universally called blueprints and in engineering and architecture had become ubiquitous, Herschel’s photochemical process producing copies at a tenth the cost of hand-tracing.

Factory blueprint (quotation drawing produced on diazo machine) of 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W196S Uhlenhaut Coupé).  Two were built, one of which sold in June 2022 for a world record US$142 million at a private auction held at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.

Refinements and economies of scale meant that during the early twentieth century the quality of blueprints improved and costs further fell but by the 1940s, they began to be supplanted by diazo prints (known also as “whiteprints” or “bluelines”).  Diazo prints were rendered with blue lines on a white background, making them easier to read and they could be produced more quickly on machinery which was simpler and much less expensive than the intricate photochemical devices blueprints demanded.  Accordingly, reprographic companies soon updated their plant, attracted too by the lower running costs, the diazo machinery not requiring the extensive and frequent maintenance demanded by the physically big and intricate photochemical copiers.

1929 Mercedes-Benz SSKL printed in blueprint style.

One tradition of the old ways did however endure.  The diazo machines caught on but “diazo print”, “whiteprint” & “blueline” never did; the drawings, regardless of the process used, the color of the paper or the lines (and many used black rather than blue) continued to be known as “blueprints”.  That linguistic tribute persisted even after diazo printing was phased-out and replaced with the xerographic print process, the standard copy machine technology using toner on bond paper.  Used for some time in commerce, large-size xerography machines became available in the mid-1970s and although originally very expensive, costs rapidly fell and the older printing methods were soon rendered obsolete.  As computer-aided design (CAD) software entered the mainstream during the 1990s, designs increasingly were printed directly from a computer to printer or plotter and despite the paper used being rarely blue, the output continued to be known as the blueprint.

Blueprint of the Chrysler Building, New York City, 1930.

Even now, although often viewed only as multi-colored images on screens (which might be on tablets or phones), such electronic drawings are still usually called blueprints.  Nor have blueprints vanished.  There are many things (buildings, bridges, roads, power-plants, railroads, sewers et al) built before the 1990s which have an expected life measured in decades or even centuries and few of these were designed using digital records.  The original blueprints therefore remain important to those engaged in maintenance or repair and can be critical also in litigation.  Old blueprints can be scanned and converted to digital formats but in many cases, the originals are fragile or physically deteriorated and finer details are sometimes legible only if viewed on the true blueprint.  Centuries from now, magnifying glasses in hand, engineers may still be examining twentieth century blueprints.

Lindsay Lohan, blueprinted.    

Cereal & Serial

Cereal (pronounced seer-ee-uhl)

(1) Any plant of the grass family yielding an edible grain (wheat, rye, oats, rice, corn, maize, sorghum, millet et al).

(2) The grain from those plants.

(3) An edible preparation of these grains, applied especially to packaged, (often process) breakfast foods.

(4) Of or relating to grain or the plants producing it.

(5) A hamlet in Alberta, Canada.

(6) As Ceres International Women's Fraternity, a women's fraternity focused on agriculture, founded on 17 August 1984 at the International Conclave of FarmHouse fraternity.

1590s: From the sixteenth century French céréale (having to do with cereal), from the Latin cereālis (of or pertaining to the Roman goddess Ceres), from the primitive Indo-European ker-es-, from the root ḱer- (to grow”) from which Latin gained also sincerus (source of the English sincere) and crēscō (grow) (source of the English crescent).  The noun use of cereal in the modern sense of (a grass yielding edible grain and cultivated for food) emerged in 1832 and was developed from the adjective (having to do with edible grain), use of which dates from 1818, also from the French céréale (in the sense of the grains).  The familiar modern use (packaged grain-based food intended for breakfast) was a creation of US English in 1899.  If used in reference to the goddess Ceres, an initial capital should be used.  Cereal, cereology & cerealogist are nouns and ceralic is an adjective; the noun plural is cereals.

Lindsay Lohan mixing Pilk.

Cereal is often used as modifier (cereal farming, cereal production, cereal crop, non-cereal, cereal bar, pseudocereal, cereal dust etc) and a cereologist is one who works in the field of cerealogy (the investigation, or practice, of creating crop circles).  The term “cereal killer” is used of one noted for their high consumption of breakfast cereals although some might be tempted to apply it to those posting TikTok videos extolling the virtue of adding “Pilk” (a mix of Pepsi-Cola & Milk) to one’s breakfast cereal.  Pilk entered public consciousness in December 2022 when Pepsi Corporation ran a “Dirty Sodas” promotion for the concoction, featuring Lindsay Lohan.  There is some concern about the high sugar content in packaged cereals (especially those marketed towards children) but for those who want to avoid added sugar, Pepsi Corporation does sell “Pepsi Max Zero Sugar” soda and Pilk can be made using this.  Pepsi Max Zero Sugar contains carbonated water, caramel color, phosphoric acid, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, caffeine, citric acid, potassium benzoate & calcium disodium EDTA.

TikTok, adding Pilk to cereal and the decline of Western civilization.

A glass of Pilk does of course make one think of Lindsay Lohan but every mouthful of one’s breakfast cereal is something of a tribute to a goddess of Antiquity.  In 496 BC, Italy was suffering one of its periodic droughts and one particularly severe and lingering, the Roman fields dusty and parched.  As was the practice, the priests travelled to consult the Sibylline oracle, returning to the republic’s capital to report a new goddess of agriculture had to be adopted and sacrifices needed immediately to be made to her so rain would again fall on the land.  It was Ceres who was chosen and she became the goddess of agriculture and protector of the crops while the caretakers of her temple were the overseers of the grain market (they were something like the wheat futures traders in commodity exchanges like the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT)).  It was the will of the goddess Ceres which determined whether a harvest was prolific or sparse and to ensure abundance, the Romans ensured the first cuttings of the corn were always sacrificed to her.  It’s from the Latin adjective cereālis (of or pertaining to the Roman goddess Ceres) English gained “cereal”.

For millennia humanity’s most widely cultivated and harvested crop, cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain, the best known of which are rice, barley, millet, maize, rye, oats, sorghum & wheat.  Almost all cereals are annual crops (ie yielding one harvest per planting) although some strains of rice can be grown as a perennial and an advantages of cereals is the differential in growth rates and temperature tolerance means harvesting schedules can be spread from mid-spring until late summer.  Except for the more recent hybrids, all cereals are variations of natural varieties and the first known domestication occurred early in the Neolithic period (circa 7000–1700 BC).  Although the trend in cultivated area and specific yield tended over centuries to display a gradual rise, it was the “green revolution” (a combination of new varieties of cereals, chemical fertilizers, pest control, mechanization and precise irrigation which began to impact agriculture at scale in the mid twentieth century) which produced the extraordinary spike in global production.  This, coupled with the development of transport & distribution infrastructure (ports and bulk carriers), made possible the increase in the world population, now expected to reach around 10 billion by mid-century before declining.

Serial (pronounced seer-ee-uhl)

(1) Anything published, broadcast etc, in short installments at regular intervals (a novel appearing in successive issues of a magazine (ie serialized); a radio or TV series etc).

(2) In library & publishing jargon, a publication in any medium issued in successive parts bearing numerical or chronological designation and intended to be continued indefinitely.

(3) A work published in installments or successive parts; pertaining to such publication; pertaining to, arranged in, or consisting of a series.

(4) Occurring in a series rather than simultaneously (used widely, serial marriage; serial murderer, serial adulterer etc).

(5) Effecting or producing a series of similar actions.

(6) In IT, of or relating to the apparent or actual performance of data-processing operations one at a time (in the order of occurrence or transmission); of or relating to the transmission or processing of each part of a whole in sequence, as each bit of a byte or each byte of a computer word.

(7) In grammar, of or relating to a grammatical aspect relating to an action that is habitual and ongoing.

(8) In formal logic and logic mathematics (of a relation) connected, transitive, and asymmetric, thereby imposing an order on all the members of the domain.

(9) In engineering & mass-production (as “serial number”), a unique (to a certain product, model etc) character string (which can be numeric or alpha-numeric) which identifies each individual item in the production run.

(10) In music, of, relating to, or composed in serial technique.

(11) In modern art, a movement of the mid-twentieth century avant-garde in which objects or constituent elements were assembled in a systematic process, in accordance with the principles of modularity.

(12) In UK police jargon, a squad of officers equipped with shields and other protective items, used for crowd and riot control.

1823: From the New Latin word seriālis, from the Classical Latin seriēs (series), the construct being serial + -al on the Latin model which was seriēs + -ālis.  It was cognate to the Italian seriale.  The Latin seriēs was from serere (to join together, bind), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European ser- (to bind, put together, to line up).  The -al suffix was from the Middle English -al, from the Latin adjectival suffix -ālis, ((the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) or the French, Middle French and Old French –el & -al.  It was use to denote the sense "of or pertaining to", an adjectival suffix appended (most often to nouns) originally most frequently to words of Latin origin, but since used variously and also was used to form nouns, especially of verbal action.  The alternative form in English remains -ual (-all being obsolete).  The –alis suffix was from the primitive Indo-European -li-, which later dissimilated into an early version of –āris and there may be some relationship with hel- (to grow); -ālis (neuter -āle) was the third-declension two-termination suffix and was suffixed to (1) nouns or numerals creating adjectives of relationship and (2) adjectives creating adjectives with an intensified meaning.  The suffix -ālis was added (usually, but not exclusively) to a noun or numeral to form an adjective of relationship to that noun. When suffixed to an existing adjective, the effect was to intensify the adjectival meaning, and often to narrow the semantic field.  If the root word ends in -l or -lis, -āris is generally used instead although because of parallel or subsequent evolutions, both have sometimes been applied (eg līneālis & līneāris).  Serial, serializer , serialization serialism & serialist are nouns, serialing, serialize & serialed are verbs, serializable is an adjective and serially is adverb; the noun plural is serials.

The “serial killer” is a staple of the horror film genre.  Lindsay Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me (2007) was not well received upon release but it has since picked up a cult following.

The adjective serial (arranged or disposed in a rank or row; forming part of a series; coming in regular succession) seems to have developed much in parallel with the French sérial although the influence of one on the other is uncertain.  The word came widely to be used in English by the mid nineteenth century because the popular author Charles Dickens (1812–1870) published his novels in instalments (serialized); sequentially, chapters would appear over time in periodicals and only once the series was complete would a book appear containing the whole work.  The first use of the noun “serial” to mean “story published in successive numbers of a periodical” was in 1845 and that came from the adjective; it was a clipping of “serial novel”.  By 1914 this had been extended to film distribution and the same idea would become a staple of radio and television production, the most profitable for of which was apparently the “mini-series”, a term first used in 1971 although the concept had been in use for some time.  Serial number (indicating position in a series) was first recorded in 1866, originally of papers, packages and such and it was extended to soldiers in 1918.  Surprisingly perhaps, given the long history of the practice, the term, “serial killer” wasn’t used until 1981 although the notion of “serial events” had been used of seemingly sequential or related murders as early as the 1960s.  On that model, serial became a popular modifier (serial rapist, serial adulterer, serial bride, serial monogamist, serial pest, serial polygamy etc)

For those learning English, the existence of the homophones “cereal” & “serial” must be an annoying quirk of the language.  Because cereals are usually an annual crop, it’s reasonable if some assume the two words are related because wheat, barley and such are handled in a “serial” way, planting and harvesting recurrent annual events.  Doubtless students are told this is not the case but there is a (vague) etymological connection in that the Latin serere meant “to join together, to bind” and it was used also to mean “to sow” so there is a connection in agriculture: sowing seeds in fields.  For serial, the connection is structural (linking elements in a sequence, something demonstrated literally in the use in IT and in a more conceptual way in “serial art”) but despite the differences, both words in a way involve the fundamental act of creating order or connection.

Serial art by Swiss painter Richard Paul Lohse (1902–1988): Konkretion I (Concretion I, 1945-1946), oil on pavatex (a wood fibre board made from compressed industrial waste) (left), Zwei gleiche Themen (Two same topics, 1947), colored pencil on paper (centre) and  Konkretion III (1947), oil on pavatex.

In modern art, “serial art” was a movement of the mid-twentieth century avant-garde in which objects or constituent elements were assembled in a systematic process in accordance with the principles of modularity.  It was a concept the legacy of which was to influence (some prefer “infect”) other artistic schools rather than develop as a distinct paradigm but serial art is still practiced and remains a relevant concept in contemporary art.  The idea was of works based on repetition, sequences or variations of a theme, often following a systematic or conceptual approach; the movement was most active during the mid-twentieth century and a notable theme in Minimalism, Donald Judd (1928-1994), Andy Warhol (1928–1987), Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) (there must have been something “serial” about 1928) and Richard Paul Lohse (1902-1988) all pioneers of the approach.  Because the techniques of the serialists were adopted by many, their style became interpolated into many strains of modern art so to now speak of it as something distinctive is difficult except in a historic context.  The embrace by artists of digital tools, algorithms, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies has probably restored a new sort of “purity” to serial art because generative processes are so suited to create series of images, sculptures or digital works that explore themes like pattern, progression, or variation, the traditional themes of chaos, order and perception represented as before.  In a way, serial art was just waiting for lossless duplication and the NFT (Non-fungible token) and more conservative critics still grumble the whole idea is little different to an architect’s blueprint which documents the structural framework without the “skin” which lends the shape its form.  They claim it's the engineering without the art.

Relics of the pre-USB age; there were also 25 pin serial ports.

In IT hardware, “serial” and “parallel” refer to two different methods of transmitting data between devices or components and the distinction lies in how data bits are sent over a connection.  In serial communication, data was transmitted one bit at a time over as little as single channel or wire which in the early days of the industry was inherently slow although in modern implementations (such as USB (Universal Serial Bus) or PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express)) high speeds are possible.  Given what was needed in the early days, serial technology was attractive because the reduction in wiring reduced cost and complexity, especially over the (relatively) long distances at which serial excelled and with the use of line-drivers, the distances frequently were extended to hundreds of yards.  The trade-off was of course slower speed but these were simpler times.  In parallel communication, data is transmitted multiple bits at a time, each bit traveling simultaneously over its own dedicated channel and this meant it was much faster than serial transmission.  Because more wires were demanded, the cost and complexity increased, as did the potential for interference and corruption but most parallel transmission was over short distances (25 feet (7½ metres) was “long-distance”) and the emergence of “error correcting” protocols made the mode generally reliable.  For most, it was the default method of connecting a printer and for large file sizes the difference in performance was discernible, the machines able to transmit more data in a single clock cycle due to simultaneous bit transmission.  Except for specialized applications or those dealing with legacy hardware (and in industries like small-scale manufacturing where such dedicated machines can be physically isolated from the dangers of the internet, parallel and serial ports and cables continue to render faithful service) parallel technology is effectively obsolete and serial connections are now almost universally handled by the various flavours of USB.

Port

Port (pronounced pohrt (U) or pawrt (non-U))

(1) A city, town, or other place where ships load or unload.

(2) A place along a coast in which ships may take refuge from storms; harbor.

(3) A place designated in law as a point of entry where persons and merchandise are allowed to pass, by water or land, in and out of a country and where customs officers are stationed to inspect or appraise imported goods.

(4) The left-side of a vessel or aircraft, facing forward (formerly called larboard).

(5) Any of a class of very fortified sweet wines, mostly dark-red, originally from Portugal.

(6) An opening in the side or other exterior part of a ship for admitting air and light or for taking on cargo.

(7) In machinery, an aperture for the passage of steam, air, water etc.

(8) In military use, a small aperture in an armored vehicle, aircraft, or fortification through which a gun can be fired or a camera directed.

(9) In computer hardware, a physical connection (serial, parallel, USB, SCSI etc) to which a peripheral device or a transmission line from a remote terminal can be attached.

(10) In computer software, an address, part of TCP and the IP stack.

(11) The raised centre portion on a bit for horses.

(12) A gate or portal, as in the entrance to a town or fortress (chiefly Scots, now archaic).

(13) In Queensland, Australia, an alternative term for suitcase (increasingly rare).

(14) In computer programming, to modify existing code written for one operating system so it will run on another; a set of files used to build and install a binary executable file from the source code of an application.

(15) The bearing or carriage of one’s self (now archaic, survives as deportment, the once synonymous portance now obsolete).

(16) An abbreviation of Portugal for certain purposes.

(17) In internal combustion engines, an aperture through which (1) the fuel-air mixture passes to reach the inlet valve(s) to the combustion chamber and (2) exhaust gasses from the combustion process pass after exiting through the exhaust valve(s).

(18) In rowing, a “sweep rower” who rows primarily with an oar on the port side.

(19) In the sports of curling & lawn bowls, a space between two stones or bowls wide enough for a delivered stone or bowl to pass through.

(20) In military terminology (also as “at the high port), to hold or carry a weapon with both hands so that it lays diagonally across the front of the body, with the barrel or similar part near the left shoulder and the right hand grasping the small of the stock; to throw the weapon into this position on the command “Port arms!”.

(21) In telephony, to carry or transfer an existing telephone number from one telephone service provider to another.

(22) In law, to transfer a voucher or subsidy from one jurisdiction to another (mostly US use).

(23) In artisan candle-making, a frame for wicks, the word in this context sometimes used generally as a device which hold something in place while being worked on.

(24) In linguistics, an abbreviation of portmanteau.

Pre 900: From the Old English and Middle English port (harbor, haven), reinforced by the Old French port (harbor, port; mountain pass), the Old English and Old French both from the Latin portus (port, harbor (originally "entrance, passage" and figuratively "a place of refuge, asylum")) from the primitive Indo-European pértus (crossing (and thus distantly cognate with ford)) from prtu- (a going, a passage), from the root per- (to lead, pass over) and related to the Sanskrit parayati (carries over), the Ancient Greek poros (journey, passage, way) & peirein (to pierce, to run through), from the Latin porta (gate, door), portāre (passage; to carry) & peritus (experienced), the Avestan peretush (passage, ford, bridge), the Armenian hordan (go forward), the Welsh rhyd (ford), the Old Church Slavonic pariti (to fly), the Old English faran (to go, journey) and the Old Norse fjörðr (inlet, estuary).  The present participle porting, the past participle is ported and the noun plural is ported.

The meaning "gateway; entrance etc" was from the Old English port (portal, door, gate, entrance), from the Old French porte (gate, entrance), from the Latin porta (city gate, gate; door, entrance), from the primitive Indo-European root per-.  The meaning "to carry" was from the Middle French porter, from the Latin portāre (passage; to carry) and is used in this sense still as “ported & porting”;  The use is Queensland, Australia to describe a suitcase as “a port” is fading as the use of regional forms diminishes.  The circa 1300 use to mean of "bearing, mien" (from circa there was the general sense of "external appearance" which extended by the 1520s to the now-archaic sense of "state, style, establishment") is an adaptation of this in the sense of “how one carries (ie deports) oneself” and survives in the word “deportment” (the once synonymous portance is now obsolete); young ladies at finishing school (a kind of training for husband-hunting) would undertake “deportment class” which apparently really did involve learning to walk with a book balanced on the head so the ideal posture could be learned.

Semiotics at sea: The international convention is port (left) is red, starboard (right) is green & stern (aft) is white (ie clear lens).  This rule governs things like navigation lights, chart markings and architectural schematics.

The meaning "left side of a ship" (looking forward from the stern) dates from the 1540s, from the notion of "the side facing the harbor when a ship is docked”.  It replaced backboard, larboard & leeboard to avoid confusion with starboard when in oral use, eventually confirmed by regulatory order of the Admiralty order in 1844 and US Navy Department in 1846.  The origin of the left-right (larboard/starboard) convention in maritime matters is in the ancient vessels which had a (permanently attached) steering oar on the right, thus dictating the need to moor with the left side parallel with the dock or wharf.  The configuration seems to have been standardized in the early vessels of many cultures because the vast majority of the human population seems long to have been right-handed.  Starboard was from the Middle English sterbord, stere-bourd & stere-burd, from Old English stēorbord, from the Proto-West Germanic steurubord (the construct of all forms steer +‎ board.  The use as an adjective is noted from 1857 but oral use likely pre-dated this.  Interestingly, in 1887, a US report noted “port” had replaced “larboard” among all classes of sailors except the whalers harvesting in the Atlantic and South Pacific although the new term was used in the Arctic fleets.

Lindsay Lohan approaching port while sitting slightly to starboard, Vanity Fair photo shoot, Marina del Rey, California, October 2010.  The location was the Sovereign, a motor yacht built in 1961 for the film star Judy Garland (1922-1969).

The figurative sense "place of refuge" is noted from the early fifteenth century, the phrase “any port in a storm” (any refuge is welcomed in adversity) first documented since 1749 but it’s likely it was in the oral use of sailors and others much earlier.  The “port of call” dates from 1810 and is a location scheduled for a visit by a ship; it’s used by both the military and civil shipping.  The phrase “first port of call” can be either a literal description of the first place a ship (or by extension other forms of transport) is to visit or figuratively “the default or usually choice of option”.  The porthole (opening in the side of a ship) dates from circa 1300 and is documented in the terminology of naval architects since 1506; the original use in warships was to describe the embrasures in the side of the ship through which cannons were fired.  What are now thought of as portholes in ships were (from 1788) originally called “air-ports” on the basis they were a "small opening in the side of a ship to admit air and light.

A mid-century modern car port.  The car is a Mercedes-Benz (R107) SL.

A portreeve (from the Middle English port-reve, from the Old English portgerēfa, the construct being port (a walled market town) +‎ gerēfa (reeve (a local official)) was variously a mayor, bailiff magistrate or warder in a port or maritime town; the equivalent office in inland settlements was the borough-reeve (mayor).  The difference was the specific duties attached to officials in places with ports.  The carport (also as also car-port), an adaptation of the French porte-cochère, was formalized in the jargon of architecture in 1939, referring to the practice of lean-to roofs being added to houses to afford weather-protection to cars.  It had become common practice as car ownership grew and many properties couldn’t accommodate a separate garage, or in the case of multiple-vehicle ownership, it couldn’t be enlarged.  The carport became a favourite of modernist architects who tended often to object to space which could be allocated to people being “wasted” on a car but in the affluent post-war years, became a class-identifier, the carport thought a symbol of poverty compared with the integrated or stand-alone double garage.  Portsider (left-handed person) dates from 1913 and was US baseball slang although, technically, it referred to those who batted left-handed rather than left-handers per se (as in cricket, there are right-handers who bat left-handed).  The distinction also existed in boxing, a southpaw originally a fighter who “leads with the left” rather than a left-hander although that does seem to be the modern use.

This is the portable loo of Kim Jong-un, (b 1984, Supreme Leader of the DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) which travels with the Supreme Leader when he visits places in the DPRK (to view missile tests etc).  In commercial parlance, these are known as portaloos.  Note the soldier stationed outside the loo, there to guard against anyone attempting to share the Supreme Leader’s facilities (it’s said the soldier has orders to “shoot to kill”).  Proof of existence of Kim III's portable loo solved one mystery which had divided genetcists and the medical community.  In a biography of the Supreme Leader's father (Kim II: Kim Jong-il (1941–2011; The Dear Leader of DPRK 1994-2011), it had been revealed The Dear Leader was not subject to bowel movements, never needing to defecate or urinate but it was not known if this is was genetic characteristic of the dynasty and therefore enjoyed also by The Supreme Leader.  Now we know.  The noun and adjective portable was from the Middle French portable, from the Latin portabilis.

Seaport describes a port which is costal rather than one on the banks of a river or the shore of a lake.  The airport (facility for commercial air transport) dates from 1902 and became (at lease in civilian use) the preferred description of the place where aircraft arrive and depart (although airfield, field, aerodrome, airstrip, airdrome & landing strip seem still sometimes to find a niche).  Airport came into regular use in 1919 (the use in reference to airships in 1902 was a one-off) and was used first to describe Bader Field, outside Atlantic City, New Jersey which opened in 1910.  The older word for such a place was aerodrome which had an interesting history, coined originally to mean “flying machine” from the Ancient Greek ἀεροδρόμος (aerodrómos) (traversing the air), the newer sense analogous with the French hippodrome, from the Latin hippodromos, from the Ancient Greek ἱππόδρομος (hippódromos), the construct being ἵππος (hippos) (horse) + δρόμος (dromos) (course).  Airport shouldn’t be hyphenated to avoid confusion with the earlier (1788) air-port which is now a ship’s porthole.

Penfords Great Grandfather Rare Tawny gift box, US$244 per 750 ml.

The use to describe the sweet, dark-red wine was from circa 1695, a shortening of Oporto, the city in northwest Portugal from which the wine originally was shipped to England (from O Porto (literally “the port”).  French wines had been preferred in England but various squabbles had for some time almost excluded them, not least because, with anti-French feeling high during the reign of Queen Anne (1665–1714; Queen variously of England, Scotland, Ireland & Great Britain 1702-1714), English politicians ran nasty “don’t buy French” campaigns.  Paul Methuen (circa 1672–1757), the English minister-resident in Lisbon, negotiated a reciprocal agreement (part of the Methuen Treaty of 1703) whereby low tariffs would be imposed on Portuguese wines in exchange for a similar accommodation on English textiles.  Portuguese wine merchants decided to stimulate trade further by spiking port wine with brandy, thereby increasing the alcohol content which gradually induced a change in the national taste and accounts for why to this day English port is stronger.  The other alcohol-related use is porter, a dark style of beer developed in London well-hopped beers made from brown malt, or well-roasted barely.  It’s un-related to port wine or Portugal and gained its eighteenth century name from the popularity the brew enjoyed among street and river porters, porters in that context being the people employed to carry or move luggage, freight etc, a use which survives in hotels, railway stations etc.

Tunnel port heads

Long rendered obsolete by modern fuel delivery systems and advances in the understanding of fluid dynamics, tunnel port heads were an attempt to remove one fundamental drawback of pushrod-activated valves in overhead valve (OHV) engines with crossflow cylinder heads: the restriction the pushrod path imposes on intake port size and shape.  Historically, the shape and size of intake ports was compromised by the need to make room for the pushrod passing from the centre of the engine to the valve lifters above the combustion chambers.  This meant it was rarely possible for intake ports to assume what was thought to be the ideal size and shape for high performance applications.

Ford’s solution in 1965 was a brass tube to house the pushrod, passing directly through the intake port, permitting the port to be as large as possible.  Dubbed the “tunnel port”, surprisingly, flow-tests proved the tube was no impediment to gas movement and the design proved successful, both in the Le Mans winning GT40s and the Galaxies on the NASCAR circuits.  Those however were big-block 427 cubic inch (7 litre) engines and the sheer size of the things disguised the inherent limitation of huge ports: the reduced velocity of gas-flow at low engine speeds which consequently produced power and torque curves unimpressive except high in the rev-range, where they were impressive indeed.  In 1969, needing more power from the small-block (Windsor) 302 cubic inch (4.9 litre) engines used in the Trans-Am series, Ford bolted on tunnel port heads, the results disastrous.  Gas flowed effortlessly and top-end power was prodigious but the cars were used on circuits and, unlike the NASCAR ovals, a broad power-band was needed and the tunnel port 302s were forced to operate at engine speeds apparently beyond the block’s capacity to survive.  The project was soon abandoned.

1968 Ford Mustang 302 tunnel port, Car & Driver comparison test with Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, March 1968.

However, the tunnel port 302s have a charisma and retain a cult-following to this day, the defenders maintaining the failures were only indirectly related to the innovative heads, citing the oiling system which was inadequate to supply the bottom end of the engine under the high lateral loads experienced.  The early versions sucked in a lot of air which caused the bearings to starve for lubrication although this was quickly resolved with the installation of dual-pickup systems.  That bottom end was anyway insufficiently strong to withstand the high engine speeds the tunnel-ports mad possible.  Before long, the race drivers were being told to limit the rpm (revolutions-per-minute (engine speed)) but that defeated the very purpose of the tunnel port.  Many also note that the 302 TPs were built on Ford’s standard engine assembly line whereas the 427 TPs were lovingly hand-assembled by a dedicated crew in a separate facility.  Race teams were used to being able to blueprint and rebuilt engines to with precise clearances using exactly weighted components but were told to use the 302 TPs just as they were delivered.  There seems no doubt there were quality and assembly problems with the engines and those who have subsequently (and for decades) used them in competition (after blueprinting and careful assembly) have reported a high level of reliability.

1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302.

In 1968 however, Ford’s engineers returned to the drawing board, adapting the canted-valve heads from their new small block V8 (Cleveland or 335 series) to sit atop the 302 Windsor.  Their efforts succeeded, the less exotic Boss 302 couldn’t match the tunnel port for top-end power but the torque curve meant it was more suitable for use in the road cars which had to be built in the volume necessary to fulfil the Trans Am homologation rules.  It proved a paragon of reliability.

427 FE tunnel-port cylinder head (upper) showing the hollow brass tunnel passing directly through the intake port compared with a standard 427 FE (lower).

Satellite

Satellite (pronounced sat-l-ahyt)

(1) In astronomy, celestial body orbiting around a planet or star; a moon.

(2) In geopolitics, as “satellite state”, a country under the domination or influence of another.

(3) Something (a county, sub-national state, office, building campus etc), under the jurisdiction, influence, or domination of another entity; Subordinate to another authority, outside power, or the like (also known as a “satellite operation”, “satellite campus”, “satellite workshop” etc).

(4) An attendant or follower of another person, often subservient or obsequious in manner; a follower, supporter, companion, associate; lackey, parasite, sycophant, toady, flunky; now used usually in the derogatory sense of “a henchman” although, applied neutrally, it can be used of someone’s retinue or entourage (and even the machinery of a motorcade).

(5) A man-made device orbiting a celestial body (the earth, a moon, or another planet etc) and transmitting scientific information or used for communication; among astronomers and others form whom the distinction matters, man-made devices are sometimes referred to as “artificial satellites” to distinguish them for natural satellites such as the Earth’s Moon.  The standard abbreviation is “sat” and the situation in which a satellite is hit by some object while in orbit (which at the velocities involved can be unfortunate) is called a “sat-hit”.

(6) As “derelict satellite”, a man-made device (including the spent upper-stages of rockets) in orbit around a celestial body which has ceased to function.

(7) In medicine, a short segment of a chromosome separated from the rest by a constriction, typically associated with the formation of a nucleolus.

(8) In biology, a colony of microorganisms whose growth in culture medium is enhanced by certain substances produced by another colony in its proximity.

(9) In formal grammar, a construct that takes various forms and may encode a path of movement, a change of state, or the grammatical aspect (highly technical descriptor no longer used in most texts).

(10) In television, as satellite TV, the transmission and reception of television broadcasts (and used also in narrowcasting) using satellites in low-earth orbit.

(11) In the military terminology of Antiquity, a guard or watchman.

(12) In entomology, as satellite moth, the Eupsilia transversa, a moth of the family Noctuidae.

1540-1550: From the fourteenth century Middle French satellite, from the Medieval Latin satellitem (accusative singular of satelles) (attendant upon a distinguished person or office-holder, companion, body-guard. courtier, accomplice, assistant), from the Latin satelles, from the Old Latin satro (enough, full) + leyt (to let go) and listed usually as akin to the English “follow” although the association is undocumented.  Although the Latin origin is generally accepted, etymologists have pondered a relationship with the Etruscan, either satnal (klein) (again linked to the English “follow”) or a compound of roots: satro- (full; enough) + leit- (to go) (the English “follow” constructed of similar roots).  Satellite is a noun, verb & adjective and satellitic & satellitious are adjectives; the noun plural is satellites.  Satellitious (pertaining to, or consisting of, satellites) is listed by most dictionaries as archaic but is probably the best form to use in a derogatory sense, best expressed in the comparative (more satellitious) or the superlative (most satellitious).

Lindsay Lohan promoting the Sick Note series, TV & Satellite Week magazine, 21-27 July 2018.

The adjectival use is applied as required and this has produced many related terms including satellite assembly (use of committees or deliberative bodies created by a superior authority), satellite broadcasting (in this context distinguished from transmissions using physical (point-to-point) cables or ground-based relays), satellite campus, satellite DNA (in genetics, an array in  tandem of repeating, non-coding DNA), satellite-framing (in linguistics, the use of a grammatical satellite to indicate a path of motion, a change of state or grammatical aspect (as opposed to a verb framing)), satellite navigation (the use of electronic positioning systems which use data from satellites (often now as “SatNav”)) and satellite station (either (1) as ground-base facility used for monitoring or administrating satellites or (2) a manned facility in orbit such as the ISS (International Space Station)), satellite telephone (telephony using satellites as a transmission vector)

Sputnik 1 blueprint, 1957.

The original sense in the 1540s was "a follower or attendant of a superior person" but this use was rare before the late eighteenth century and it seemed to have taken until the 1910s before it was applied in a derogatory manner to suggest "an accomplice or accessory in crime or other nefarious activity” although the Roman statesman Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BC) often used the Latin form in this way.  In the seventeenth century, as telescopes became available, the idea was extended to what was then thought to be "a planet revolving about a larger one" on the notion of "an attendant", initially a reference to the moons of Jupiter.  In political theory, the “satellite state” was first described in 1800, coined by John Adams (1735-1826; US president 1797-1801) in a discussion about the United States and its relationships with the other nations of the Americas although in geopolitics the term is most identified with the “buffer states”, the members of the Warsaw Pact which were within Moscow’s sphere of influence.  The familiar modern meaning of a "man-made machine orbiting the Earth" actually dates (as scientific conjecture) from 1936, something realized (to the surprise of most) in 1957 when the USSR launched Sputnik 1.  Sputnik was from the Russian спу́тник (sputnik) (satellite (literally "travelling companion” and in this context a shortened form of sputnik zemlyi (travelling companion of the Earth), from the Old Church Slavonic supotiniku, the construct being the Russian so- (as “s-“ (with, together)) + пу́тник (pútnik) (traveller), from путь (put) (way, path, journey) (from the Old Church Slavonic poti, from the primitive Indo-European pent- (to tread, go)) + ник (-nik) (the agent suffix).

Sputnik, 1957

Russian Sputnik postcard, 1957.

The launch of Sputnik shocked the American public which, in a milieu of jet aircraft, televisions and macropterous Cadillacs, had assumed their country was in all ways technologically superior to their Cold War enemy.  Launched into an elliptical low-Earth orbit, Sputnik was about twice the size of a football (soccer ball) and it orbited for some three more months before falling towards earth, the on-board batteries lasting long enough for it to broadcast radio pulses for the first three weeks, transmissions detectable almost anywhere on earth.  It sounds now a modest achievement but it needs to be regarded as something as significant as the Wright Flyer in 1903 travelling 200 feet (61 m), at an altitude of some 10 feet (3 m) and in the West the social and political impact was electrifying.  There were also linguistic ripples because, just as a generation later the Watergate scandal would trigger the –gate formations (which continue to this day), it wasn’t long before the –nik prefix (which had actually been a part of Yiddish word creation for at least a decade) gained popularity.  Laika, the doomed stray dog launched aboard Sputnik 2 in November 1957 was dubbed muttnik (although the claims it was the first living thing in space have since been disproved because "living" entities were both on board the Nazi V2 rockets (1944-1945) which often briefly entered the stratosphere and have long been present in the upper atmosphere where they’re ejected into space by natural atmospheric processes) while the early US satellites (quickly launched to display the nation’s scientific prowess) failed which gave the press the chance to coin kaputnik, blowupnik, dudnik, flopnik, pffftnik & stayputnik.

Sputnik 1's launch vehicle (left), the satellite as it orbited the earth (centre) and in expanded form (right. 

Although not a great surprise to either the White House or the Pentagon, the American public was shocked and both the popular and quality press depicted Sputnik’s success as evidence of Soviet technological superiority, stressing the military implications.    This trigged the space race and soon created the idea of the “missile gap” which would be of such significance in the 1960 presidential election and, although by the early 1960s the Pentagon knew the gap was illusory, the arms race continued and the count of missiles and warheads actually peaked in the early 1970s.  It also began a new era of military, technological, and scientific developments, leading most obviously to the moon landing in 1969 but research groups developed weapons such as the big inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and missile defence systems as well as spy satellites.  Satellites were another step in the process of technology being deployed to improve communications.  When President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the news didn’t reach Europe until the fastest ship crossed the Atlantic a fortnight later.  By the time of President McKinley’s assassination in 1901, the news travelled around the world by undersea cables within minutes.  In 1963, while news of President Kennedy’s death was close to a global real-time event, those thousands of miles from the event had to wait sometimes twenty-four hours to view footage which was sent in film canisters by air.  By 1981, when an attempt was made on President Reagan’s life, television feeds around the planet were within minutes picking up live footage from satellites.

1967 Plymouth Satellite convertible.

Chrysler's Plymouth division introduced the Satellite on the corporation's intermediate ("B") platform in 1965 as the most expensive trim-option for the Belvedere line.  Offered initially only with two-door hardtop and convertible coach-work, the range of body-styles was later expanded to encompass four-door sedans and station wagons.  In a manner, typical of the way the industry applied their nomenclature as marketing devices to entice buyers, the Belvedere name was in 1970 retired while Satellite remained the standard designation until it too was dropped after 1974.

1970 Plymouth Road Runner, 440 6 Barrel.

Were it not for it being made available in 1966 with the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8, the Belvedere and Satellite would have been just another intermediate but with that option, it was transformed into a (slightly) detuned race-car which one could register for the road, something possible in those happier times.  The Street Hemi was an expensive option and relatively few were built but the demand for high-performance machinery was clear so in 1968, Plymouth released the Road Runner, complete with logos (licensed from the Warner Brothers film studio for US$50,000) and a “beep beep” horn which reputedly cost US$10,000 to develop.  The object was to deliver a high-performance machine at the lowest possible cost so the Road Runner used the basic (two-door, pillared) body shell and eschewed niceties like carpet or bucket seats, the only addition of note a tuned version of the 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8 engine; for those who wanted more, the Street Hemi was optional.  Plymouth set what they thought were ambitious sales targets but demand was such that production had to be doubled and the reaction encouraged the usual proliferation, a hardtop coupé and convertible soon rounding out the range.

1970 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner Superbird.

The option list later expanded to include the six-barrel version of the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8, a much cheaper choice than the Street Hemi and one which (usually) displayed better manners on the street while offering similar performance until travelling well over 100 mph (160 km/h) although it could match the Hemi’s sustained delivery of top-end power which, with the right gearing, would deliver a top speed in excess of 150 mph (240 km/h), something of little significance to most.  However, by the early 1970s sales were falling.  The still embryonic safety and emission legislation played a small part in this but overwhelmingly the cause was the extraordinary rise in insurance premiums being charged for the highset-performance vehicles, something which disproportionately affected the very buyers at which the machines were targeted: single males aged 19-29.  However, the platform endured long enough to provide the basis for the Road Runner Superbird, a “homologation special” produced in limited numbers to qualify the frankly extreme aerodynamic modifications for use in competition.  At the time, the additions were too radical for some buyers and dealers unable to find buyers were forced to convert the things back to standard specifications to shift them from their lots but they’re now prized collectables, the relatively few with the Street Hemi especially sought.

1971 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner.

The intermediate line was revised in 1971 using the then current corporate motif of “fuselage styling” and it was probably more aesthetically pleasing there than when applied to the full-sized cars which truly were gargantuan.  The 1971 Satellites used distinctly different bodies for the two and four-door models and while there were no more convertibles, the Street Hemi and six-barrel 440 enjoyed a swansong season although sales were low, the muscle car era almost at an end.